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Daniel Dubois’ trainer Don Charles has played down reports that a party at the fighter’s home hours before his world heavyweight championship bout with Oleksandr Usyk at Wembley on Saturday night disrupted the boxer’s preparation.
Dubois was knocked out in the fifth round by Usyk and Charles does not dispute that his charge did not arrive until 8.20pm at the arena, 90 minutes before his scheduled ring walk time. Footage of what Charles describes as more of a “cultural gathering” than a party emerged on Tuesday, but the trainer insisted that Dubois and his entourage arrived within their allocated time, and had ample time to undergo all pre-fight preparations necessary to face Usyk.
“It was more like a gathering, a cultural gathering,” said Charles. “I don’t think it was public, in fact it was the same [sort of] gathering that was done back in September last year when Daniel was going to fight Anthony Joshua on the fight day. The same thing occurred where a lot was made of the ring walk. He came in [at Wembley] like a gladiator, he was charged up.”
Charles also brushed off suggestions of a disagreement between Dubois and his father Stanley. “I wasn’t there, but [talk of a disagreement] is all hearsay. I can assure you that wouldn’t have happened.”
Charles says the pre-fight “ritual” organised by Dubois’ father helped him. “So call it a ritual, whatever, it worked and it helped Daniel to be in the mode, fight mode to be destructive,” explained the trainer. “So the father replicated that again with the view that it should put Daniel in the right state of mind. So many boxers, if you speak to all boxers across the country, they’ll all tell you they’ve all got their little things that they do on fight day to mentally be able to support them to go and do what they do.
“So it didn’t work this time and that’s why there’s a lot of lies going on instead of focus on the actual fight, where the fight was fought, the way it panned out. And there’s a lot of focus on this party, it was a gathering, a cultural gathering.
“The only way [the arrival time] would have an impact is if we didn’t do all the preliminaries, the hand wraps, the stretches, the normal procedure. We were able to do everything with 10 minutes to spare for the TV, also for the ring walk,” he added.
Despite being the underdog, some pundits had backed the British boxer to defeat Usyk, following his career being revitalised under the wing of Charles. Dubois secured three consecutive KO victories over Jarrell Miller, Filip Hrgovic and Anthony Joshua on his way to winning the IBF world heavyweight championship.
Usyk dominated Saturday’s fight, with all three judges having the Ukrainian winning coming into the fifth round, where Usyk closed the show with a looping left hand that floored Dubois, to crown himself undisputed heavyweight world champion.
Charles has admitted there were things that they could have done better, but claimed it was too early to completely digest the fight, with the entire team still “licking their wounds”.
“I’m in regular contact with [Daniel]. The young man’s doing well,” said Charles. “He’s healthy, he’s not harmed. He’s sustained a terrible knockout and is just resting up. He’s going to go on holiday in the next week or so. All we’ve done in the last two years since I’ve been working with him is go from camp to camp. Camp to camp is exhausting. I’m exhausted. Imagine how the fighter feels.”
Charles praised fellow heavyweight Tyson Fury for publicly defending Dubois. Fury took to Instagram to implore people to stop referring to Dubois as a “coward”, insisting that “there are no cowards in boxing”, and that Dubois did his best.
“I’m glad someone like that is able to [support Dubois], a big figure like him,” he said. “People listen to what Tyson says. I’m glad for him and I applaud him for standing up for Daniel too. Because what disappoints is a lot of these people putting these negative narratives out. A lot of them are retired boxers, some of them are current active boxers. And they too should know better than to try to put down a young fighter like him. You’ve just got to ask what is their motive, what are they trying to achieve?”
