For a coach, perhaps the only thing better than a fight going exactly as expected is for the same fight to end up being even easier than they expected, or indeed hoped.
That was the experience of Don Charles and Kieran Farrell the night their man, Daniel Dubois, took on Anthony Joshua in front of around 90,000 fans at Wembley Stadium. It was a fight in which Dubois, despite holding the IBF heavyweight title, was not only made to walk to the ring first, but treated by most beforehand as no more than an underdog; an afterthought. He was, according to the script, the man Joshua was supposed to stop within a few rounds before positioning himself for a fight against the winner of the December 21 rematch between Tyson Fury and Oleksandr Usyk.
As it turned, however, on September 21 Dubois was everything Charles and Farrell said he was. Within just 30 seconds he had steadied Joshua with a hard left jab and a couple of minutes later he had put the former heavyweight champion on the deck. By the end of round five the fight was over.
“We did it relatively easier than we thought we would do it, I’ll be honest with you,” Farrell, who after the fight retired to his hotel room to drink tea and eat a chocolate brownie and some ice cream, told BoxingScene. “But we’ve been there every day, dedicated to this. We were on Don’s farm every day for 12 weeks and Daniel put the work in. You do something every day for that length of time and it can get boring, but the enthusiasm Daniel has for training – he doesn’t show that. It’s great. He enjoys it. They say a happy fighter is a dangerous fighter and you saw proof of that against Joshua.”
Another boxing adage along similar lines is that a hurt fighter is a dangerous fighter. This appeared to ring true in round five of the bout. That was the round in which Joshua had his first and only success, when landing a right hand out of nowhere, and yet rather than deter Dubois or swing the fight back in the Watford man’s favour all that punch conspired to do was make a focused man even more focused. Suddenly Dubois, whose power had already troubled Joshua, simply stepped back and allowed Joshua to get excited and have his moment. He then found the fight-ending shot – a right hand thrown short and with no small amount of power and conviction.
It was, looking back, a sign once again of Dubois’ composure and his coolness under fire – something apparent as early as round one when he approached Joshua and shoved his first jab in his face. “The first thing we said to Daniel was ‘Go out and give him something so that he knows he’s in the ring with you’; that’s exactly what he did,” said Farrell. “He went out there and slammed that jab down and that jab is like a fucking back hand. It’s a powerful weapon.”
To launch this weapon is often easier said than done, of course. Against Joshua, Dubois had to first get himself into position to fire it and do so without taking anything in return. Before that, and before even entering the ring, he had to manage the nerves with which all fighters are riddled when awaiting the first bell. This time, too, there were more eyeballs on Dubois than ever – enough to cause some fighters to shrink beneath the pressure. Not Dubois, though. Too big and seemingly unflappable for that, he stood tall and wore throughout the fight a mask of total indifference; blank in the very best way.
“It was relaxation,” said Farrell. “It sounds simple and it is. I don’t want to make it over-complicated. If you look at the body language of both lads going into that fight, you’ll see the difference. ‘AJ’ looked like it was his first time going into the ring in front of 98,000 fans. Daniel was fired up; he was loose. We kept reminding him to stay loose and never stand still. We wanted him moving and on his toes before going out there and then we wanted him to keep the same thing going when AJ was doing his big ring walk and the introductions were going on.
“We were expecting the ring walk to be about 20 minutes long but it was pretty short and sharp in the end. Then, once in the ring, AJ stood still. I wouldn’t say he looked scared but he looked very nervous.
“When we then caught him with a back hand over the top in the first round, and he went down, I was like, ‘Wow, this is mental’. Everyone thought Daniel was going to be the one getting caught by the back hand and it’s turned out Joshua is getting caught with it. It was a nice moment really. We couldn’t have got off to a better start. Now we just had to keep it going and force the finish – and we did it. Daniel boxed perfectly.”
Now, with Joshua defeated, comes the small matter of a rematch. This, for Joshua, will give him the chance to get his revenge and prove the first fight was merely an aberration, whereas for Dubois it should give him the opportunity to play in this fight the role he should perhaps have played first time around. He will also go into any potential rematch as a man who not only believes he can beat Anthony Joshua, as was the case before, but as a man who in fact knows he can beat Anthony Joshua.
It is for this reason, among many others, Farrell suggests that rematching Dubois could be the biggest mistake Joshua can make at this juncture in his career.
“If I was advising Joshua, I wouldn’t be telling him to jump back in with Daniel Dubois – a young, hungry, 27-year-old lion,” he said. “What I see day in, day out, I know what he is capable of, and Joshua does too now. If Daniel has somebody hurt, they ain’t going to see the final bell. He’s a devastating puncher and I’m only talking facts here. He’s like a modern-day Mike Tyson. But a bigger version.
“There are other fights there for Joshua. He can do the [Deontay] Wilder fight. That would be a good fight between two massive names who both need a big win right now. A win for either of them in that fight would give them a load of confidence. They’ve been linked together for a long time and are both now coming off defeats. It would make sense to do that fight.”