By Charles Brun: 2000 Olympic super heavyweight gold medalist Audley Harrison says the way for Daniel Dubois to defeat IBF, WBA & WBO champion Oleksandr Usyk is to fight the way he did in his victory over Russia’s Alexei Lezin.
For Dubois to follow Audley’s blueprint that he used against Lezin to defeat Usyk, he’ll need to A. clinch frequently B. the referee to stop the contest prematurely.
Harrison was getting lit up by Alexei Lezin on the inside and was heading for a near-certain loss in the fourth round if not for the referee stopping the contest out of the blue.
You can argue that Audley’s gold medal victory was tainted due to how the fight was stopped. It wasn’t as bad as the gold medal that Anthony Joshua won in the 2012 Olympics with his four questionable wins, but it was close.
“The way you beat Usyk (just like how I beat Lezin) is with educated pressure,” Audley Harrison said on social media. “You can’t walk in & land a shot; you need to take away his strengths; add feinting, take away his jab, step around, hit body, hip & arms repeatedly (high tempo) high volume jabs, he won’t see right.”
Dubois will be challenging Usyk this month on August 26th at the Stadion Wroclaw, in Wroclaw, Poland. Most people give Dubois very little chance of winning, as he looked poor in his last fight against Kevin Lerena last December, and some would argue that the fight should have been stopped in the first round after he was dropped three times by the South African.
It was a comedy with how Lerena kept knocking Dubois down, and the referee Howard Foster allowed it to continue. At what point would Foster have said ‘enough’ and stopped the fight?
Would it have taken seven or eight knockdowns of Dubois for Foster to pull the plug? The fight, by the way, took place in England.
The 6’5 1/2″ Harrison defeated Lezin in the fourth round in what appeared to be a premature stoppage by the referee.
Lezin was ahead 8-6 and on his way to a victory when the referee stopped the fight after a left-hand shot from Audley buzzed the Russian. Lezin looked surprised at the fight being stopped as he appeared to be fine and ready to continue.
Harrison’s fighting style is nothing like that of the slow-moving, heavy-handed Dubois (19-1, 18 KOs), and it’s unlikely that he could fight the way he did in his win over Lezin.
“On fight night, I’ll be a different animal. I’m in fight mode right now. I’ve been in training camp, and I’m ready to go,” said Dubois to iFL TV.
