Why did Anthony Joshua lose so bad against Daniel Dubois

First haymaker. What a freak punch. It looked like Joshua thought the round was over and Dubois landed a monster overhand right on a unprepared opponent.

 

He got punched in the face by someone he underestimated. Simple as that.

 

He now panics when he gets hit. It looks like he forgets to box and is overthinking what to do. He also isn’t a boxer. He is a power punching brawler. Trying to be a slick boxer is just not him.

 

Joshua came out with his left low and his chin in the air. The commentators picked up on it straight away. Why? We’ll probably never know, but there’s no way that was Davison’s game plan. Forget about blaming him for Joshua’s rookie error.

It was no surprise when Dubois landed big early on Joshua - none at all - if you look at the lack of defence being offered by Joshua.

 

He looked like he reverted back to his Ruiz days / daze.

he fought quite reckless / irresponsibly.

 

There's several clear possible reasons, or at least factors:
1) Joshua's declining - he's been in plenty of tough fights and that adds up.
2) Dubois is coming into his prime - he's been through the ringer as a prospect, but he's got both the power and durability to potentially dominate the next era.

1 and 2 together are a powerful combination - the changing of the guard often happens when the previous generations top fighters are declining and the next generations are coming into their own... The same was in process when both Fury and Joshua beat Wlad (despite Wlad being clearly way more complete and more proven in the ATG stakes).

3) Joshua's mentality has been questionable at times - with enough confidence, he could sometimes ride waves of pressure and then pick the right moment to turn things around (the Pov fight is a good example of this)... But he's not consistently had that.

4) Joshua's chin isn't bad, but his recovery could be a lot better... He can take a decent punch or two when frontrunning, but if he gets buzzed too badly or hurt in a significant way then he can really struggle to get back into it - the first Ruiz fight was a good example of that.



As far as the fight itself goes... The approach was all wrong - whether because AJ and his team had underestimated his decline or DDD's rise, and as a result came in with completely the wrong gameplan, or whether it didn't matter how they wanted to fight (because it was Dubois' to dictate and AJ didn't react right), it doesn't really matter...

Ultimately the combination of 1) and 2) is only going one way - Joshua is going to continue to decline, DDD is going to continue to improve... And sometimes that difference is enough that it doesn't matter what else you do.


Prime, fully confident Joshua would've been very likely to win that fight...
But that's not the same as saying any version of Joshua beats any version of Dubois either - not only would Dubois always have a good punchers chance, but we haven't even seen his best yet to be able to compare prime for prime.


Joshua tends to get judged over harshly on here at times - he's flawed without question, but he fought the best that had the balls to fight and his resume is solid, which is more than can be said for some of his contemporaries... He's unlikeable, but that doesn't mean judgement should be unrealistic - there's no fraud here.

 

In saying that though, I could see AJ taking an overconfident Dubios in the rematch.

 

My father (who I have been watching boxing with since Hagler-Hearns) came over to watch. With about the first jab Dubois landed, he said “This won’t last long. AJ cannot handle Dubois’s power.”

Pops wasn’t wrong.

AJ is a solid fighter. Huge, strong, shows up fit, big power, decent skills. Just seemed like he couldn’t recover after that first KD.

and Dubois is a murderous puncher with excellent hand speed for a man of his size. Let’s not act like he’s not dangerous AF.

 

Yeah I'm not the biggest AJ fan, but at least he honored his fights and never called in sick.

 

you’ve got a point. Dubois has looked a bit chinney in the past, and maybe AJ doesn’t hit quite as hard as him, but he’s not far off. There’s certainly the possibility of the fight going the same way, but in reverse.

 

Re: AJ’s recovery, I think that is his Achilles heel. Some guys can get knocked senseless, then be fine in 15 seconds (see Tyson Fury, Evander Holyfield, Larry Holmes, etc). Some guys cannot shake it off. And AJ mostly cannot shake it off (Wlad aside).

 

That punch could have KO'd a horse, just like Povetkin's punch on Whyte.

Part of the problem is that when you have a massive ego and low IQ like AJ, it's very easy to be delusional. AJ wasn't used to fighting young fighters with big power. He was fighting shot fighters with power or shot fighters without power or youngish fighters without big power. He was used to being the guy with the big power and the mma fight probably made him even more overconfident. Dubious was known to be vulnerable, he was also inexperienced. They really took the fight because they thought they'd run through him.

But they weren't used to fighting dangerous opponents. And then that punch landed that could have KO'd a horse.

 

His defence is crap. Doesn’t put the lead hand out to parry the left hook after a 1-2. Keeps lead hand at his waist while still in his opponents punching range. Head is always on centre line.

 

I don't think he was over confident. He was stood in his corner, totally still and staring vacantly into space when in the ring when Michael Buffer was announcing the fight. Dubois in contrast was stalking around looking determined and ready to go.

Mentally Joshua was broken by Usyk, his confidence is shot I don't think he has the self belief anymore. Unless he's in with a handpicked opponent he's likely to freeze again. Sport at the top level is more mental than physical and when your as mentally fragile as Joshua is now, anything could happen.

There's a reason they didn't take the rematch, he's not the same fighter that stood with Wlad or even the one that was composed enough to out point Ruiz Jr. This one you can get in his head, you can make him doubt himself and that's a fighter you can beat.