DON CHARLES insists his corner will not be frantic when he leads Daniel Dubois and the team into battle on September 21.
Dubois will make the first defence of his IBF Heavyweight title against former champion Anthony Joshua at Wembley Stadium. In June, Dubois picked up the biggest win of his career beating IBF mandatory challenger Filip Hrgovic. The Croat was stopped in the eighth round giving the Londoner the interim belt which was then elevated to full status after Oleksandr Usyk vacated the title.
The nature of Dubois’ victory was impressive, but away from the punches, Charles’ voice in the corner was drowned out by the fighter’s father, who roared his son on from ringside. Charles, along with Kieran Farrell, who was added to the team earlier this year, are a strong duo, but the trainer doesn’t want a repeat of there being too many voices for Dubois to listen to like last time.
“We see everything that everyone sees,” Charles told Boxing News.
“In the heat of the moment you totally zone out. I didn’t hear anyone else in the corner because you’re zoned in, you have to be, and it’s only afterwards where everyone’s saying, ‘Messy corner’ – fine we’ll take that, it’s all emotions.
“We got the victory, that’s all that matters. We’ve gone home, we’ve gone away, we’ve looked at that, we’re going to address that. It was too frantic for many reasons but I can assure you I don’t believe that will happen again. Thank God we won because when you lose then that’s more evident and you get slated. It was a frantic corner, granted, we’ve taken note. We don’t want it like that. That’s part of the development and understanding for the corner team.”
