I can only judge as an outsider, but I’m still struggling to understand why Daniel Dubois has separated from Don Charles.
Charles led Dubois to his three best wins – against Jarrell Miller, Filip Hrgovic and then Anthony Joshua – and did so in successive fights. After those successes together, he appears to be blaming Charles for the fact that, as the underdog, he then lost to Oleksandr Usyk – and in essence, by no longer working with him, he is blaming him for that defeat.
Not that, given Dubois’ past, it came as a surprise. It’s just that he’s also had time to mature and become more settled as a fighter since the days – before Charles – when he was working with Martin Bowers and then Shane McGuigan.
The win over Joshua is the most devastating anyone’s ever recorded over Joshua. That win may have been followed by the defeat by Usyk, but Usyk’s an all-time great – and it’s the fighter, not the trainer, who’s responsible for getting into the ring and executing the fight after all.
Unless – and of course this is purely hypothetical – when they were preparing for Usyk, Charles instructed Dubois to follow one game plan, Dubois favoured another, and they settled on Charles’ game plan and Dubois believes that it cost him, him responding to losing that night by choosing to stop working with Charles seems unjust, and even sad.
Dubois first lost to Usyk in 2023, in his first fight with Charles. What they achieved together after that earned him the IBF heavyweight title and, ultimately, the rematch in July. After that first defeat he was thrown to the wolves – Miller’s unproven at the highest level but Hrgovic and Joshua aren’t. He was expected to lose to both Hrgovic and Joshua – gambles were taken with his career – but instead of sinking he swam.
Between the two fights with Usyk he become more aggressive and more confident; it was only when being more aggressive and confident wasn’t working in the rematch with Usyk that his previous limitations were again exposed. He’s also been accused of quitting, but those accusations were also made when he lost to Joe Joyce in 2020 under Bowers, before McGuigan and Charles were on the scene.
If Tony Sims is to be his new long-term trainer, I hope he’s given the authority to have the control the best trainers require to achieve the results they want and that he’s been clear about the conditions he’s willing to work in. His experience demands that; too often I’ve witnessed fighters change trainers and then regress because that control hasn’t been there.
Deontay Wilder, a fighter I once worked closely with, is one who springs to mind. I believe he’s been going downhill since he stopped working with me and Mark Breland – and I write that as a long-time admirer of Malik Scott, who I worked with numerous times throughout his fighting career.
Joshua – like Dubois and Wilder, another explosive heavyweight – changed trainers after both of his defeats by Usyk. The first time he separated from Rob McCracken, and I don’t believe that’s ever paid off. He was certainly more competitive in their first fight than he was in the second.
There seemed to be too many people around Joshua – too many voices – when Robert deserved to be the one clear voice like Manny Steward, Freddie Brown or Ray Arcel once would have been. After Joshua beat Wladimir Klitschko in 2017 I sent Robert a text message to say “You brought him back – you got him through that” because I was so impressed with his work in the corner. Joshua was in trouble, but McCracken, having guided him through the amateur ranks to an Olympic gold medal and been so influential in his development as a fighter, knew how to communicate with him and had Joshua’s confidence that night. I’m sure Carl Froch would attest to that.
A trainer’s knowledge of his fighter ought to be taken into consideration before changes are made. When a fighter reaches a certain point in their career it’s not just about learning new things, it’s about having the right chemistry with their trainer, the trust and confidence in them when the pressure’s on, and a certain accountability for their own performances in the ring.
*
I write this at the airport on my way back home from the UK, where I worked the corner of the British super flyweight Jack Turner during his victory over Nicolas Agustin Muguruza of Argentina.
Turner has incredible potential. That fight showed that he needs to continue to develop his technique; that he needs to win rounds and be ahead in a fight instead of trailing and then knocking opponents out, which his trainer Joe McNally also knows. Muguruza represented a very worthwhile test and a significant step up in class that he could learn from, and it was a test he passed.
