Muhammad Ali. Evander Holyfield. Lennox Lewis.
Three boxers from an elite club of heavyweight greats to have been three-time world champions.
Anthony Joshua can put his name on that exclusive list by disposing of a British rival who sees himself as the future of the sport’s marquee category.
He can do it on quite the stage, too.
Joshua, a darling of British boxing ever since winning Olympic gold at the London Games in 2012, is looking to complete his late-career rebuild by beating Daniel Dubois to reclaim the IBF belt in front of around 96,000 fans at Wembley Stadium in London on Saturday.
It is one of the biggest crowds for any British sporting event — and that’s something Joshua is used to after selling out the UK’s biggest stadia for years. Indeed, it was at Wembley where he produced his greatest performance in defeating Wladimir Klitschko in epic fashion in 2017 to become a two-belt world champ.
As for the 27-year-old Dubois, a somewhat accidental world champion after taking the IBF crown vacated by Oleksandr Usyk, this is fairly new territory. It’s his first title defense and second world championship fight — Joshua has had 12 of them, of which 10 have been for unified titles — as he looks to establish his name atop the heavyweight scene.
A win for Dubois (21-2, with 20 KOs) and it will be seen as a definitive changing of the guard. The pretender will then be the big man in town, with huge riches in the offing in potential future fights against Usyk or Tyson Fury, who meet in a rematch on Dec. 21 in Saudi Arabia for Usyk’s WBA, WBC and IBO heavyweight belts.
For Joshua (28-3, with 25 KOs), it would mean climbing the mountain once again — or even hanging up his gloves.
“I’ve been to the well,” Joshua said. “Dan’s fighting someone who is willing to die in there.”
The 34-year-old from Watford, just outside London, faced a career reset after losing back-to-back fights against Usyk, soon after his first pro defeat — a shocker to Andy Ruiz Jr. in 2019.
Joshua got rid of his long-time trainer, set up camps in the U.S. instead of England, and tried to change his strategy. He had lost twice to Usyk, a smaller man, and it made him realize boxing is as much about skill and ring craft as power and brutality.
The rebuild has seen him win four straight fights — against Jermaine Franklin, Robert Helenius, Otto Wallin and then former UFC champion Francis Ngannou — and each performance has been better than the last.
His devastating punching power is still there, too. Just ask Ngannou, who was knocked out cold in the second round with an unblocked right hand.
“I’m not depending on punch power, you know,” Joshua said Thursday in a news conference held by the two rivals. “It takes a lot more than that to be a great fighter. There's various ways I can win."
Questions are still being asked of Joshua, however. Does he belong back in the first tier of the heavyweights? Will that long-awaited fight with Fury — trailed for almost a decade now — ever happen?
“Everything I’ve done in the past, we have to draw a line (through) because I can’t take that with me on Saturday night,” Joshua said. “In that moment, that’s all that matters.”
Dubois, nicknamed “Dynamite,” told The Associated Press this week he is looking to legitimize his status as the newest world heavyweight champion with what would be the biggest win of his career. He only gained the IBF belt in late-June after Usyk relinquished it, to no longer be undisputed champ.
“I need to show them on the night what I’m all about and then make the world respect me,” Dubois told the AP, “and make them put some respect to my name.”
Joshua is a bigger puncher and Dubois’ reputation might still be wounded after he took a knee and was counted out against another Brit, Joe Joyce, in 2020 for his first loss.
Dubois’ loss to Usyk in Wroclaw, Poland, is his only experience of big-time boxing and he said it made him grow “from a boy to a man.”
Joshua made that leap a long time ago and quickly became a national treasure, unbeaten for his first six years as a pro — three of them as a world champion — and establish an aura of invincibility.
After a chastening few years, he can reach those heights again on Saturday when the challenger, unusually, will start as the favorite.
