By

Eniola Olatunji

British Heavyweight boxer,  “Tripple D” Daniel Dubois on Saturday at the Wembley Stadium, London before a capacity 96,000 crowd shocked the Boxing world with a 5th round knockout that laid fellow British – Nigerian Boxer Anthony Joshua to sleep on the canvas.

Tripple D meant business from the beginning punching down AJ in rounds three and four with the score card reading 8-10; 9-10; 8-10 and 8-10 all to Tripple D in the IBF world title fight that was vacated in June by Oleksander Usyk of Ukraine.

AJ was nailed by a huge right hand to the chin in round five. The Ref gave him the full 10 seconds count, AJ tried getting up but his legs and arms were gone from the severe beating in previous rounds so the Ref ended the bout. 

Thus Dubois will meet the winner of the Oleksandr Usyk versus Tyson Fury bout schedule for Riyadh on December 21 for the unified title.

AJ was a former two – time unified title holder who sought to join legendary Boxing squad of Muhammed Ali; Evander Holyfield; Lennox Lewis and Michael Moorer in the world Heavyweight class to have won the title thrice.

AJ (aged 34) now has a record of 28 wins 4 knockout to Dubois (aged 27) 22 wins to 2 Knockouts; though they are both tall just 6ft 6ins of AJ to 6ft 5ins of Dubois but AJ has an 82” reach to Dubois’78”.

AJ last fought and defeated former UFC champ, Francis Ngannous while Dubois who was knocked out by Usyk in 2023 has won back to back fight over Jarrel Miller and Filip Hrgovic.

AJ said, “I had a sharp opponent and a fast opponent and secondly, a lot of mistakes from my end”.

Dubois who was hurt by AJ before the atomic blow said, “I’m a gladiator, I’m just a warrior to the end, to the bitter end”.

In an under card bout fought after singer Liam Gallagher had thrilled the audience, 
Hamzah Sheeraz had punched drunken Tyler Denny to a TKO in round 2 via combination of punches and Ref stopped the fight. 

In another undercard bout in the Bantamweight category, Ghana’s Joshua Bautsi defeated Scotland’s Willy Hutchinson by split decision 113-112 for Willy but 117-108 and 115-110 for Joshua.

There was an interruption by technical malfunction in the 8th round of Joshua Bautsi versus Willy Hutchinson bout forcing the Ref to stop the fight but it was quickly restored.