It is fair to say Kieran Farrell knows more about Oleksandr Usyk than he does most fighters. When he isn’t holding the pads for Daniel Dubois and mimicking the moves of Usyk in London, Farrell is back home teaching his son, nine-year-old Frazer, how to stand like Usyk, shape up like Usyk, and essentially fight like Usyk.
For Usyk, the template, there can be no greater compliment than hearing that one of the coaches of his next opponent is building his own son in his image. Yet Farrell, the coach and admirer, doesn’t mind showing his appreciation. In fact, he believes his long-held fondness for Usyk will have only increased the value of what he brings to the Dubois camp ahead of Dubois fighting Usyk.
“I admire Usyk. He’s a very good fighter,” said Farrell, a former professional lightweight from Manchester. “I modelled my own son off Usyk’s style and have got him waving his lead hand about and doing lots of feinting and moving his feet. You only have to watch him shape up for a few seconds to see Usyk in him.
“Because I have modeled him on Usyk, I’ve watched a hell of a lot of Usyk and feel like I know him inside out. That’s been good for Daniel, I think. I bring quick feet to the pad work we’re doing, but I have also watched a lot of Usyk over the years.”
As always, the importance of time and practice cannot be understated. To get his son to fight like Usyk has taken a great deal of both and it has been no different getting Dubois ready to beat Usyk this Saturday (July 19) at Wembley Stadium. With time, of course, comes trust. Trust is essential whenever a coach tries to implement complicated ideas and few challenges in boxing are as complicated as Usyk. It is complicated to try to fight like him and it is even tougher trying to conquer him.
“The more you train, the more you find out about someone,” said Farrell. “You find out the things they take to and the things they don’t take to. With this fight, you can’t be picky. There are things he [Dubois] has got to take to because he is fighting the best pound-for-pound fighter in the world. He’s got to make some adjustments and he has. Daniel’s taken to the training like a duck to water.
“He’s still got so much more to show the world and so many more improvements to make. He’s not the finished article yet and that’s mad to think because he’s fighting the best fighter in the world for all the marbles. But it’s true. He is still improving all the time.
“I feel like everyone just thinks he’s a banger, but there’s so much more to his game than that. I’ll tell you now, when we get moving around, he’ll be doing Ali shuffles and everything. He can move his feet brilliantly. He’s six-six but he can move like Muhammad Ali. His movement is so good.”
Rather than a leap into the unknown, what makes this next assignment so interesting for Farrell is the fact that Farrell, along with Don Charles, will be leading Daniel Dubois into a battle against a man he has already faced. First time around, back in 2023, Dubois was out of his depth in the presence of Usyk and ultimately stopped in round nine. This time, however, things are a little different. For one, Dubois returns to Usyk with a belt to his name (the IBF belt stripped from Usyk) and the mindset of a champion, not a challenger. He is also on a fine run of form, having stopped Jarrell Miller, Filip Hrgovic, and Anthony Joshua in successive fights, and appears to be walking taller than before, like a man who believes.
“I watched the first fight when it happened and have watched it plenty of times since,” said Farrell. “One thing I’ll say is this: he [Dubois] is a different fighter now. Whether it’s the work we’ve done with him, the work he has done himself, or the fact he is just growing as a fighter, there’s no comparison between what you saw against Usyk in the first fight and what you’ll see on Saturday.
“It would be silly of Usyk to sit there and watch that fight and think he’s going to come in the same way. Nothing about Daniel Dubois is the same. That night he was throwing only single shots and he was very flat-footed. He didn’t move on the outside. He was beaten by a better man.
“But he has made improvements since then and I feel like he’s a million per cent believing in himself now. He thinks he can beat anyone. He just beat AJ [Anthony Joshua] and AJ was for so long the king, especially over here [in Britain]. Both of them grew up in London and AJ was always the target for so many heavyweights in Britain. For Daniel to beat him at 27 [years of age] is massive. If you can’t take confidence from beating AJ in front of 90,000 fans at Wembley Stadium, I don’t know what will make you confident. He’s now got Usyk back at the same venue. It’s not in Poland [the location of the first fight], or in hostile territory. It’s at home, where he just won the biggest fight of his career. He has all the advantages this time.”
It's true. Not only will Dubois, 22-2 (21), have the advantage of fighting at home, but he is the younger man by some 11 years and seemingly entering his prime just as Usyk, 38, is in danger of exiting his. And yet, regardless of these advantages, there can be no denying that Usyk, the boss of Dubois and everybody around him, carries the biggest advantage going into this rematch. It is one thing to be young and boxing at home, but Usyk, 23-0 (14), is a seasoned road warrior, one who relishes and has made a career of meeting and demoralizing opponents on hostile ground.
“I’ll just repeat what Daniel Dubois has been saying all week: it’s going to be chaos,” said Farrell. “It has to be a controlled chaos and Daniel Dubois will thrive in that chaos, just like the AJ fight. That was also chaos. Nobody expected to see AJ knocked down four times.
“It will be exciting anyway. I know that much.”
On the subject of Oleksandr Usyk, Kieran Farrell knows plenty, of that there is no question. But until proven otherwise, nobody, not even Farrell, knows how to beat the great Ukrainian.
