Daniel Dubois has been handed a glowing reference by sparring partner Johnny Fisher ahead of his showdown with Anthony Joshua.

Johnny Fisher has issued a warning to Anthony Joshua ahead of his upcoming face-off with Daniel Dubois. Fisher, known as ‘The Romford Bull’, delivered an intriguing breakdown of the fight between the two fighters.

Despite favouring Joshua for the win, Fisher warned that it won’t be a walk in the park for AJ. In an interview with Seconds Out, the 25-year-old reflected on his own sparring experiences with Dubois, admitting one punch from the 26-year-old left him staggered.

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Fisher said: “Dubois can seriously whack you – I’ve sparred him loads, the right hands could shake you to your absolute core, like they shake you. I remember I got hit by one, it was like an electric shock going through my body.”

Despite ample respect for Dubois’ strength, Fisher is placing his bets on Joshua emerging with the win. When asked who will take the title, he said: “Definitely Anthony Joshua. But not the margin that people would suspect. I reckon it’s like a 55/60 to a 40/45 split in favour of Anthony Joshua.”

“I haven’t sparred Joshua and I know how hard he can hit just from who he’s knocked out and what he’s done to people,” Fisher continued.

“But the jab of Dubois as well is like a right hand so – I can’t speak about sparring Joshua, I know that Dubois isn’t no joke and is coming off great ones like Jarrell Miller and Filip Hrgović. Hrgović has been a sort of bogey man after the last two to three years, so to deal with him is [good].

“It’s not going to be an easy night for Joshua but one thing that makes me think Joshua will win – the amount of right hands Hrgović hit Dubois with, Joshua if he lands these right hands then it’s going to be night-night.”

Dubois has prepared to face Joshua with victories over Jarrell Miller and Filip Hrgovic, after he was knocked out by Oleksandr Usyk in a controversial fight. The British fighter hit Usyk with a punch that was deemed a low blow by referee Luis Pabon – who gave the Ukrainian more time to recover, allowing him to fight back and beat Dubois in the ninth round.

Since two consecutive losses to Usyk, Joshua has gone 4-0 with wins against Jermaine Franklin, Robert Helenius, Otto Wallin and Francis Ngannou. Joshua and Dubois are set to go head-to-head on Saturday, September 21 at Wembley Stadium, where they’ll be battling it out for the IBF heavyweight title.

Daniel Dubois’ Interim title was upgraded to full championship but he seeks legitimacy and a knockout victory against Anthony Joshua

Daniel Dubois is the reigning IBF heavyweight world champion. But he is yet to win a fight for a full world title.

However, he intends to rectify that when he fights Anthony Joshua at Wembley Stadium on September 20, live on Sky Sports Box Office.

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Dubois lost his attempt to win the unified world title when Oleksandr Usyk stopped him in nine rounds last year.

The Londoner regrouped after that to defeat Jarrell Miller and then won the IBF Interim belt with his victory over Filip Hrgovic.

After beating Tyson Fury to become the undisputed champion, Usyk agreed a rematch and vacated the IBF title. That saw Dubois upgraded to full world champion.

He believes a victory over Joshua, a world-class heavyweight who has been a unified champion himself twice before, will legitimise his championship status.

“I’m the underdog because I have to prove myself and beating him and winning this next fight will set me as a legit champion. I’m raring to go. This is everything. The big opportunity,” Dubois told Sky Sports News.

Kevin Lerena has admitted that Daniel Dubois will not back down without a serious fight against Anthony Joshua in their September scrap

Kevin Lerena confesses that Anthony Joshua was right about his rival Daniel Dubois’ ‘no-quitter’ attitude in the ring.

Dubois is set to fight Joshua next month and Lerena has claimed that the match will be “very 50/50” between them. Speaking on the Seconds Out podcast, the South African boxer shared that Dubois has a serious kind of spirit that could turn the fight in his favour.

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Lerena and Dubois fought in late 2022 and the South African knocked his opponent down three times – but Dubois got back up every time and eventually won the fight by knocking Lerena down. Back in 2020, Dubois had been dealing with backlash from the public after he chose to take a voluntary knee against Joe Joyce during a fight – as people labelled him a ‘quitter’.

Dubois’ decision to step out of the ring after sustaining a fractured eye socket and nerve damage was defended by fellow Brit Joshua, who told the Sun: “If Daniel needs someone to speak to, he should call me. It is easy for people to criticise from outside the ring – but some people have been out of order. Daniel took a massive risk in taking that fight, as did Joe Joyce. They both knew the dangers and they both put it all on the line.

“I hear people talking respectfully about tapping out in MMA fights. Then when a boxer stops because his eyeball is about to fall out, they call him a ‘quitter’ – are they serious?

“Daniel’s time will come. I believe I will fight both him and Joyce. Joyce is underrated. He had a top amateur pedigree and it shows. This is a great time for British heavyweight boxing – it has never been stronger – and those two guys are both a huge part of it.”

Lerena was in agreement with Joshua on Dubois attitude, and admitted that the 26-year-old was justified in protecting his physical health. He said: “When you look back at his fight with Joe Joyce, I don’t think you can call that quitting. I think he had a very serious injury, you know, the man’s got to realise we’re in there to make a living and to get back to our families, and if he felt the injury was limiting his performance then he did what he needed to do.

“At the end of the day, I say look where Joyce is now and look where Dubois is. Dubois has surpassed what Joyce has achieved and he’s gone on to do a lot more. He’s in mega fights so it just shows you to never give up. I don’t think he’s a quitter to be honest.”

Lerena also weighed up Dubois’ chances against Joshua, as the 32-year-old added: “Since he beat me, he’s lost to Usyk. He’s overcome adversity – in the fight with me he had to overcome adversity getting off the canvas and rallying back to beat me.

“He overcame adversity there, he fought Usyk in a fight that many thought he beat him with a body shot. Whether it was a body shot or not, who knows, but he overcame adversity again because he got stopped in that fight. He then came back, he beat Jarrell Miller, he smashed Jarrell Miller and he smashed Hrgović.

“And to be honest, I thought when he fought Hrgović, I genuinely thought Daniel Dubois will beat him, but I didn’t think [he would beat him] like that. He showed a lot of grit and he’s come into himself.”

Dubois and Joshua are set to face off on Saturday, September 21 at Wembley Stadium for the IBF world heavyweight title – an hour that Joshua is keen to reclaim after losing his heavyweight titles to Oleksandr Usyk.

Two-time world heavyweight champion Anthony Joshua is set to face Daniel Dubois for the IBF belt in an all-British showdown at Wembley Stadium in September

Eddie Hearn said any bottled substance that Anthony Joshua consumes is tested beforehand to avoid any attempt of the British boxer ingesting banned substances through surreptitious means.

Joshua is bidding to become a three-time world heavyweight champion on September 21 as he faces Daniel Dubois for the IBF belt in an all-British showdown at Wembley Stadium.

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The fight will arrive almost three years to the day since Joshua relinquished his WBO, WBA, IBO and IBF titles to Oleksandr Usyk, and two years since his last world title fight after losing to the Ukrainian in a rematch.

Joshua has won all four of his fights since to galvanise his shot at title redemption.

And according to Hearn, he and his team go to great lengths to avoid any threat to the sanctity of the two-time world heavyweight champion boxing reputation amid a slew of doping scandals involving high-profile boxers in recent years, including two of Joshua’s opponents last year.

Joshua was forced to fight Robert Helenius after Dillian Whyte failed a drugs test, knocking the card down from a pay-per-view bout to a standard DAZN fight.

But the controversy only escalated after Finn also tested positive following Joshua’s seventh-round knockout. Joshua, meanwhile, returned negative tests for his Voluntary Anti-Doping Association (Vada) tests.

Both men protested their innocence. And while Helenius was handed a two-year doping ban for violating anti-doping rules, Whyte was cleared to resume his boxing career after it came to light that a contaminated substance resulted in the positive drug test ahead of his battle with Joshua.

And boxing promoter Hearn believes the threat of contamination through unintentional or even devious means is so great to boxers at elite-level, that the 45-year-old has claimed he tests every bottle that comes within touching distance of Joshua.

“I think 20% of failed drugs tests are legitimately fighters that are unlucky or have unknowingly taken a substance,” Heard told GRM Daily’s Thoughts In A Culli. “I think 80% of people cheat. And establishing what’s what is very difficult to do.

“Because fighters are never going to take illegal substances themselves. Someone will come up to them and say, we need to improve your strength and what we can do is take some of this. And maybe they won’t even tell them it’s a banned substance. But a lot of the time people are genuinely cheating.

“And we’re talking about testing to minute trace levels that would be in your blood. And in Mexico, there is a genuine thing where some meat contains testosterone. And fighters test positive for that. Things like eggs, you don’t know what people are putting in animals.

He added: “Whenever I go to a restaurant with AJ, I’m looking at the food thinking, because there’s some horrible —s out there, you put something in that food and your career is over. And imagine, everything that you built, all because of one evil individual, comes crumbling down.

“Here’s another example. After a tough fight, you might get in the ring and someone – either from the other team or wherever – and they’ll come up to you and offer something to drink. What’s in that? Do you know what I mean? I’m not saying that there is anything in there, but there could be.

“So at the top level, like AJ, every bottle is tested. Every bottle is sealed. Nothing comes in the changing room. You have to, because you’re correcting your career, your brand, your reputation. The worst thing in the world is testing positive for having not knowingly taken a substance. Then you’re called a cheat for the rest of your life despite never having done it.

“I’m paranoid in that world because I know what people are like.”

Tyson Fury is not one to shy away from a challenge.

‘The Gypsy King’ has fought some of the greatest fighters of his generation such as long-reigning heavyweight king Wladimir Klitschko and undisputed champion Oleksandr Usyk.

He also famously shared a brutal trilogy with one of the most destructive punchers in the history of the sport in Deontay Wilder.

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But there is one boxer he admits he will never face – his long-time training partner and close friend Joseph Parker.

Asked last year if he would ever entertain a fight with Parker, Fury, who was the WBC heavyweight champion at the time, replied: “Definitely not.

“No. I’d rather give him the belt than fight him for it.

“We’re too close for that fight and there’s plenty of heavyweights out there.

“He doesn’t need to fight me, I don’t want to get beat up, sorry!”

Fury may be forced to make the tough decision if he defeats Usyk when they rematch for the WBA ‘super’, WBO and WBC titles on December 21.

Parker picked up the WBO ‘interim’ title by beating Zhilei Zhang in his last outing in March and would be next in line in the sanctioning body rotation system to face the winner.

The expectation is that whoever emerges victorious from Daniel Dubois and Anthony Joshua’s all-British showdown for the IBF strap on September 21 will be next in line for a shot at Usyk or Fury.

However, the WBO could throw a spanner in the works by mandating Parker to box the unified heavyweight champion.

Of course, a step-aside fee can be agreed to allow the original plan to go ahead and Parker would likely take this to avoid causing his close friend a headache should he end up in possession of three of the four major sanctioning body belts at the back end of the year.

Although Parker’s stance on fighting Fury is slightly different.

“If it ever came down to it and Tyson was No. 1 and I was No. 2, and there was no one else to fight, and it could help me and my family and secure us for the rest of our lives, I think Tyson and I could do something together,” he said earlier this year.

“But I have the utmost respect for the guy and what he has done for my career, and if it wasn’t for him I wouldn’t be where I am today.

“But if it has to come down to it I think we can put everything aside and do it before we sit down after the fight and say, ‘Hey man, you caught me with that good shot,’ and that sort of thing if you know what I mean.”