On Sept. 21, Anthony Joshua will face IBF heavyweight champion Daniel Dubois at Wembley Stadium.
Should Joshua, 28-3 (25 KOs), beat his fellow Londoner, he will recapture the belt he first won against Charles Martin more than eight years ago. Yet this is a much more mature and considered Joshua than the ultra confident wrecking machine who brushed Martin aside inside two rounds.
After dominating a long list of challengers, Joshua took some time to find his way after a stunning defeat to Andy Ruiz back in 2019. He beat the Mexican American in a return to regain his unified heavyweight titles but then lost them again to Oleksandr Usyk.
A second defeat to Usyk triggered an outpouring of emotion from a clearly distressed Joshua, who wondered aloud why a fighter with his physical attributes couldn’t beat the outstanding Ukrainian.
Joshua was written off by many after that night in Saudi Arabia but has slowly but surely turned the doubters back into believers.
After boxing his way to a solid but safe decision over Jermaine Franklin, a frightening finish of Robert Helenius injected some life into Joshua’s campaign to regain his heavyweight crown. His calm, composed dissection of a hesitant Otto Wallin last December was the ideal next step and, three months later, boxing novice Francis Ngannou provided him with two rounds of target practice.
Maybe a wiser Joshua has learned to appreciate his past successes, or maybe Usyk’s brilliant victory over Tyson Fury to claim the undisputed title eased his mind. Whatever the reason, the 34-year-old seems to have come to terms with the fact that although he is far too good for the vast majority of heavyweights, truly elite operators like Usyk and Fury will always pose serious problems.
On Sept. 21, we will find out which tier Dubois, his next opponent, fits into. But Joshua will, as usual, enter the ring mentally prepared and agrees, too, that these days he is a different fighter.
“You can say so. Always developing, always learning,” he told Queensberry. “I do look back at my old fights as well. At the end of the day they were different types of opponents. I could have been beating a lot of lesser challenging opponents for many, many years. I could have been coming into my world title years now but I’ve done it early.
“So what I’m trying to say is that when I’m fighting guys, it’s hard to look unbelievable against someone that's basically on the same level as you. World championship fights, they’re 50-50.
“But I get it. People, they expect a lot. They want to see dominance.”
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