The manner of defeat matters. Listen to the embittered devotees of the defeated, the specious concoctions they use to soften the pain of defeat—their pain, of course, a pain all the more real for its irrationality. There is the pain of the athletes, too: those with stakes beyond fandom and the bragging rights of the bystander, beyond the adopted hopes of previous generations, beyond wagered sums, trivial or tidy. The real sacrifice is theirs, as is the fallout. Perhaps this is especially so in a bloodsport, where in those 400-odd square feet, there is no hiding, no blaming anyone but yourself for what humiliation even your effort might produce.
British heavyweight Daniel Dubois suffered bad losses, losses made worse by their glaring similarity—and it mattered. The first came in November 2020 against glacial Joe Joyce. Whether “Dynamite” managed to crack the concrete that housed Joyce’s teeth, whether he precipitated the eventual crumbling of an indestructible chin years later, is a question for his apologists. One thing is certain, however: Dubois’s body broke first. In the tenth round, his left eye swelling shut, Dubois suffered one more Joyce jab, took a knee, and popped defiantly to his feet eleven seconds later. The better part of valor spared Dubois what his eye specialist called potentially career-ending double vision. But quitting in the ring carries consequences, especially when you are ahead on two scorecards, and those consequences become feverish when a mere jab precipitates the taboo.
His journey of reclamation seemingly complete, Dubois faced Oleksandr Usyk in August 2023. In the fifth round, Dubois caught the unified heavyweight champion with a right hand to the waistband. Ruled a low blow, the punch nearly stopped the fight, so drawn out was the champion’s recovery. Four rounds later: another jab, another knee, another eleven-second reprieve, another bad loss hung on Dubois.
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The manner of victory matters too, especially in a bloodsport, where entertainment figures in the violent desiderata and where the unforgettable makes men forget.
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Dubois scored the kind of win that matters Saturday, blasting out former heavyweight heir apparent, Anthony Joshua, in five one-sided but dramatic rounds before a frenzied crowd in Wembley Arena, London. If it is too early to say Dubois ended one career while saving another, that is only because the end in boxing rarely comes when it should. And it never comes when the fighter corkscrewed into the canvas is the driving force behind the turnstiles churning 98,000 rotations. But there was no tomorrow for Dubois, not if he suffered another bad loss. And he fought accordingly. “I’m ready to go, I’m ready to fight,” said Dubois at the Thursday press conference. Simple, clear, and true.
He speared Joshua with sharp jabs early, a success encouraged by Joshua’s low hands, high chin, and penchant for backing up in a straight line. Joshua, meanwhile, struggled to establish his jab as Dubois slipped it well, especially to the right, which set up the right hands he launched in response. Beyond the strategic advantage Dubois established early was his bearing: he had a focus and urgency in glaring contrast to Joshua’s almost casual disinterest. One man was participating in a sport, the other was fighting. With seconds left in the first round, Joshua backed away from Dubois, perhaps following that often accepted silent agreement that hostilities cease before the break. But Dubois rejected this pact: he exploded with an overhand right that crashed into Joshua’s chin. Down went “AJ”. And while he beat the count, he slid woozily to his corner, lucky for the round’s end.
Joshua, 28-4(25), was down again in the third, a left hook snatched his legs and sent him to the ropes, where Dubois set upon him, swinging to the bell, which sounded with Joshua on the seat of his trunks. Like the right-hand exclamation at the end of the first round, Dubois’s hook punctuated the late exchange as he again took advantage of Joshua’s disinterest in protecting himself.
While credited in the fourth for a knockdown on a slip, there was no mistaking the legitimacy of Dubois’s finish. Buckling Dubois with a right hand in the fifth, Joshua closed in earnest, unloading two more right hands before switching to his uppercut. He’d thrown his rear uppercut throughout the fight, timing Dubois as he rushed in, using the punch to stave off defeat (if not secure victory); but here, with Dubois in retreat, Joshua readied his kill shot.
Just as you do not keep your hands low, do not carry your chin high, do not exit straight back—you do not throw long lead uppercuts. Violating the first three rules put Joshua behind on the cards; violating the last one put him facedown on the canvas. Dubois, 22-2(21), slipped the first two punches, showing—as he had throughout the fight—an ability to recover that his opponent lacked, then countered the uppercut with a short, crushing overhand right. Joshua fell in a heap, his 250 pounds thudding in nonresponse. Struggling to beat the count, the former future of the division was in child’s pose when referee Marcus McDonnell opened both hands.
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Was this a bad loss for Joshua? While he fought with some malice against Dubois, the fits of competitive anger that his supporters begged for as Joshua rebuilt himself in the Ruiz aftermath, he had neither the focus nor the passion of Dubois. Moreover, his legs and chin seem untrustworthy. Joshua made it clear he intends to fight on, that he is a warrior; to his credit, against Dubois, he embraced a warrior’s fate. But the arrogance of inevitability is gone from Joshua, and he entered—was pounded into, really—a different phase of his career Saturday. The obvious opponent for him is Deontaty Wilder, the hypothetical nemesis of his prime who, like Joshua, has been relegated to the losers bracket. Plenty will wring their hands over the perils of a fight that pairs such absurd power with poor punch resistance. But this is when so many of the fights aficionados wish for happen: when neither fighter thinks he has more to lose than the other. Any sanctimony over Joshua-Wilder would surely dissipate by the opening bell. Wilder early or Joshua a little later? is a question that would still make each of them rich.
Dubois is also looking to the past for his future. He wants another crack at Usyk, and rightly so. He was either an inch or an error away from becoming the first and only man to beat (and stop) the Ukrainian, and that feat would only be more impressive since Usyk added Tyson Fury’s scalp to his resume. Usyk consoled Dubois in the aftermath of their fight in 2023, he encouraged a crestfallen Dubois to dream, to believe in himself because the Londoner could still become a champion. Dubois beating that man would be more than poetic: you get the sense now that for Dubois, it’s expected. With two bad losses behind him, Dubois is no longer fighting to stay relevant—he is fighting to rule.
In Between Rounds 