AFTER a punishing loss to Joe Joyce, former British and Commonwealth heavyweight champion Daniel Dubois is coming back. Dubois had sustained significant damage to his eye in that defeat to Joyce but the 23-year-old has recovered from that injury. On June 5 he will box Romania’s Bogdan Dinu.
The Londoner will do so under the guidance of a new trainer, Mark Tibbs, though currently Dubois has been training with his father Jimmy Tibbs while Mark prepares Billy Joe Saunders for his May fight with Canelo Alvarez.
“I am excited to be back in the ring on June 5 after the frustration of being kept out of the gym and doing what I love to do for a number of months after my last fight,” said Dubois. “This is my chance to remind people of what I am really about, which is winning fights in a devastating fashion. I don’t need to make any excuses for the Joe fight because everybody could see the issue with my vision, but Joe won fair and square and we move on.”
Dinu is a good comeback fight for Dubois. The Romanian has only lost twice in his 22 contests, knockout defeats to the now disgraced Jarrell Miller in 2018 and world title challenger Kubrat Pulev in 2019. But it is a surprise that the WBA have sanctioned this bout for an ‘interim’ heavyweight strap. The WBA have quite enough heavyweight champions already. Anthony Joshua for a start has kept their main or ‘Super’ championship active. They’ve made an undeserving Trevor Bryan a ‘regular’ titlist. Mahmoud Charr (inactive since 2017) is somehow their ‘champion in recess’ and they’ve thrown in a ‘Gold’ belt round the waist of Robert Helenius as well.
With Dinu ranked as the WBA number two, victory surprisingly would catapult Dubois back into world level contention. However he maintained, “Time is on my side but I don’t intend to slow down my progress and I am more than happy to be returning to the ring in a big title fight that puts me right back in the picture.”
