Last Saturday (November 28, 2020) Daniel Dubois was stopped by former WBA Gold belt holder, Joe Joyce. The unexpected outcome of the fight has sparked comparisons with the UFC, in which, fighters can take multiple loses, including submission defeats, without being written off by fans in contrast to boxing where boxers who lose their unbeaten records are too often written off as finished in the sport.
Dubois, who uses the ring name 'Dynamite' was 15-0 heading into the fight with 14 KO wins but took a knee after a jab to his badly swelling eye in the tenth round and then apparently fully conscious allowed the referee to count him out. Making matters worse Dubois was apparently ahead on points when the fight was stopped.
Dubois blamed the pain from his injured eye for his defeat and skated over the issue of whether he, to use the Q word, 'quit' or not. In a statement posted to Dubois's social media the former British, Commonwealth, WBC Silver and WBO International champion wrote:
"Thank you to everyone who has sent messages of support over the weekend. All my respect to @joejoyceboxing, he boxed well and won fair and square.
"I thought I was winning the fight. I tried to fight through the injury but I couldn’t in the end. I’m out of hospital and will wait now for the fracture to heal.
"I’ll be back to prove my doubters wrong and my fans right."
The obvious problem with this narrative being that the eye injury, now reported to be a fractured eye socket, was in no way an accident; Joe Joyce deserves credit for continually jabbing Dubois's left eye throughout the fight as part of a strategy to get the stoppage. Fight fans shouldn't be too hard on Dubois, he is only 23-years-old and was up against an experienced 35-year old Olympic Silver Medalist with wins over former world champions. With his eye closed shut, it could be argued that his corner should have have stopped the fight earlier; so Dubois would have not been in the situation he found himself in.
Other heavyweights, who have lost their undefeated records in recent times, have been much more creative with finding excuses. In February (2020), Tyson Fury knocked out the previously undefeated heavyweight king, Deontay Wilder, to take away the latter's WBC crown. Initially, the fallen champion blamed the clunky 40-pound and $40,000 costume, reminiscent of Robocop, the ex-champ wore for his ring walk. It didn't take long for footage of Wilder telling Joe Rogan that he trains in a "45-pound vest" to resurface and nullify that excuse.
What followed were months of silence from Wilder. Then, on Halloween, fittingly enough, arguably the strangest video ever put out by a former heavyweight champion to explain their loss was posted to Wilder's Social Media. In the bizarre two minuet video, Wilder alleged that Fury's gloves had been interfered with and said his trainer, Mark Breland, had been "disloyal" by stopping the fight. In later outbursts the Bronze Bomber went even further, implying the referee was biased against him and even that Mark Breland had "tampered" with his water.
Excuses and conspiracy theories are nothing new in boxing, of course. Previous heavyweight champions had found excuses to explain their defeats in the past. Mike Tyson in the 1990s and Jack Dempsey back in the 1920s, used the old excuse of a long count from the referee to explain their own defeats and Wilder himself attempted to use the same excuse to explain his split decision draw with Fury in the first fight.
In contrast, eight months earlier (June 1, 2019) Anthony Joshua made no excuses for his knockout loss to Mexican-American heavyweight underdog Andy Ruiz immediately after their first encounter . Joshua's fans, however, behaved very differently to the defeated champion, starting various rumors to explain how their Olympic hero had been beaten up so badly by a last minuet replacement that could often be seen snacking on Snickers during the build up to the fight. The excuses included everything from family arguments, to the Gold Medalist suffering a panic attack before the fight and even Joshua going into the fight already with a concussion following a knockdown in sparing. None of these claims have ever been verified and have been denied by Joshua's team. Shortly after winning the championship back in his rematch with Ruiz, weirdly, Joshua began to blame his previous defeat on a mysterious "health issue" that left him feeling "tired and drained". What that issue is, however, has not yet been made public.
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