By Barry Holbrook: Daniel Dubois has replaced his trainer Martin Powers with Mark Tibbs, and he’ll be back in the ring in April or May.
The heavyweight contender Dubois (15-1, 14 KOs) is coming off a disappointing 10th round stoppage defeat against Joe Joyce last year on November 28th.
Dubois, 23, suffered a broken eye socket injury that led to him taking a knee in the tenth round and being counted out in the Joyce fight.
The doctors have reportedly cleared Dubois to resume his career, which he plans on doing in April or May. Dubois will be allowed to begin sparring in three weeks to allow his eye a little more time to heal.
As long as there are no setbacks with Dubois’ eye problem, we should see him back fighting soon.
Tibbs will obviously be working with the 6’5″ Dubois to teach him to move his head so that he’s not so easily hit as he was by Joyce.
Dubois looked fine on offense in that fight, but he couldn’t get out of the way of the 6’6″ Joyce’s ramrod jab, which he hit him repeatedly with.
What was interesting about that fight is, Dubois was landing the harder shots in each round, hitting Joyce with punches that would have knocked out most fighters well before the 10th round.
Joyce’s tough chin and his ability to continue to land his hard jabs sporadically in between Dubois’ massive shots proved to be the deciding factor.
That fight showed that even a fighter that doesn’t have a huge punch could win if they can stay in there long enough to wear down the more talented guy. Joyce’s jab had the same effect as water slowly wearing down a rock over time.
Dubois’ promoter Frank Warren still believes in him, and he’ll have him back out soon fighting against a still to be determined opponents.
“He is not interested in social media, which is very good. He just wants to get on and fight,” Warren said to the Dailymail about Dubois.
“I met with him last week. He is not a braggart or a loudmouth and was quite philosophical. When he was caught, he said the pain was searing right through his head,” said Warren.
For Dubois to avoid getting hit with shots, he’ll need to be a little less aggressive because he’s somewhat slow and robotic in the same way that Joyce is, and he’s not going to turn into a defensive artist.
It’s unrealistic to expect Tibbs to work wonders with Dubois’ defense to try and make him something that he’s not physically designed for. Dubois is what he is.
No matter who trains him, they’re not going to turn him into a heavyweight version of Pernell Whitaker. Whatever gains made on Dubois becoming more defensively sound will see an equal loss in offensive capability.
The loss for Dubois wrecked his chances of facing Oleksandr Usyk for the interim WBO heavyweight title to get in position to challenge the winner of the two Anthony Joshua vs. Tyson Fury fights. Instead, Joyce will be taking on Usyk (18-0, 13 KOs) next in a fight that he believes will take place in April.
It’s up in the air whether Dubois will ever develop into a future heavyweight world champion. We’ll have to see if his eye will hold up under the rigorous pounding that it will take in the remainder of his career.
As I mentioned, even if Dubois does improve with his head movement, he’s still a slow-moving, robotic heavyweight that will always be easy to hit.
“The pressure’s on him now, but it is not like he took a real belting or got knocked out,” said Frank Warren about Dubois in his loss to Joyce.
“If he had been pulled out the round before, two judges had him ahead on their scorecard.
‘We want to get him back out in late April or maybe May. All of us are very disappointed with what happened, but he is young, and we are not going to rush him into anything,” said Warren.