Daniel Dubois can come back from his loss to Joe Joyce but he needs to learn from the defeat, according to his promoter Frank Warren.

Dubois was counted out in the tenth round of the British, Commonwealth and European heavyweight title fight at Church House, Westminster, when he took a knee after being caught on his damaged left eye by a jab.

The 23-year-old spent much of the night at Moorfields Eye Hospital in central London, where it was discovered that he suffered a fractured orbital bone and nerve damage. He is due to see a specialist on Monday to discover if he requires surgery.

“He has a fractured orbital socket and the last punch he took it caught a nerve and it shot through him, he couldn’t focus and see and that was that,” Warren said. “He would have had to be pulled out in the next round anyway.

“Having said that on the scoring of the judges, he would only had to have won one of the last two rounds and he would have won it. I had him up about a round up, but there was nothing.

“It is not the end of the world for him, he didn’t get a belting. It’s a horrible injury he got. If he can’t learn from that fight then he will never learn.”

Warren believes Dubois suffered the eye damage early on, which could have affected Dubois’s ability to put his game plan into action.

“I said before the fight that I fancied him, but his fight is about who can control the action,” Warren said. “He got caught early and you could see that was going to close. 

“What wasn’t there was his head movement and that comes from your jab.  One thing I was pleased with though was that Joyce caught him with 4-5 really good shots and he took them all. There is no problem with the chin.”

While Warren wants to push Joyce towards a fight for the vacant WBO title with Oleksandr Usyk, a rematch with Dubois could be somewhere down the line.

“We aren’t hanging around with Joe, he is 35, he has got to move,” Warren said. “Who has ever won the British, Commonwealth and European titles in 12 fights? Joe is as capable as anyone of winning a world title.

“It was an excellent fight, it will be an excellent rematch. With a bit of luck we will get the rematch by the end of next year. Fix the eye, get Daniel a couple of fights and see where we are and where Joe is.”

Ron Lewis is a senior writer for Boxing Scene. He was Boxing Correspondent for The Times, where he worked from 2001-2019 - covering four Olympic Games and numerous world title fights across the globe. He has written about boxing for a wide variety of publications worldwide since the 1980s.