Oleksandr Usyk isn’t thinking about Tyson Fury or any heavyweight other than Daniel Dubois this week.

Usyk understandably would’ve preferred to fight Fury next in what would’ve been a full title unification bout. Their representatives couldn’t agree on money, however, which left Usyk to make a mandated defense of his WBA title against Dubois on Saturday night at Tarczynski Arena Wroclaw, a soccer stadium in Wroclaw, Poland.

Fury, of course, is preparing for a crossover event in which he will face former UFC heavyweight champ Francis Ngannou. Their exhibition is scheduled for October 28 in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.

Ukraine’s Usyk (20-0, 13 KOs) still wants to face Fury (33-0-1, 24 KOs) because it would afford him an opportunity to become boxing’s first fully unified heavyweight champion of the four-belt era. As much as he wants to fight Fury, Usyk stressed during an “Across The Table” segment for TNT Sports Boxing that he is fully focused on Dubois, who is a huge underdog, yet also a big puncher who has won 90 percent of his professional fights by knockout (19-1, 18 KOs).

“I don’t underestimate him,” Usyk told host Carl Frampton, according to promoter Alex Krassyuk’s translation. “He’s the man. He’s tough. He’s hungry. He’s young. He wants to have it. He wants to have my belt. I treat him a hundred percent, like I used to treat Anthony Joshua or Dereck Chisora or Tony Bellew. It’s exactly the same for me. I trained hard in my gym to do my job properly. [However] it goes, it has to go the way my team planned for me.”

London’s Dubois, 25, has won four straight fights, all inside the distance, since another hard-hitting Brit, Joe Joyce, beat Dubois into submission during the 10th round of their November 2020 battle at Church House in London.

The 6-foot-5, 240-pound Dubois was knocked down by unheralded longtime cruiserweight Kevin Lerena three times during the first round of his last bout, but Dubois contended that those three trips to the canvas were consequences of a knee injury he sustained. Dubois recovered and dropped South Africa’s Lerena (29-2, 14 KOs) twice before referee Howard Foster stopped their scheduled 12-rounder in the third round December 3 at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium in London.

The 6-foot-3, 221-pound Usyk, a former undisputed cruiserweight champion, has not been knocked down during his 10-year professional career. The 2012 Olympic gold medalist outpointed former IBF/IBO/WBA/WBO champ Anthony Joshua in each of his last two bouts, but the 36-year-old southpaw will end a one-year layoff when he battles Dubois because his 12-round, split-decision victory over England’s Joshua (26-3, 23 KOs) in their rematch took place last August 20 in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia.

TNT Sports Box Office will televise Usyk-Dubois as the main event of a pay-per-view show in the United Kingdom and Ireland (£19.95; 6 p.m. BST). ESPN+ will stream Usyk-Dubois as a one-bout broadcast in the United States (5 p.m. EDT; 2 p.m. PDT).

Keith Idec is a senior writer/columnist for BoxingScene.com. He can be reached on Twitter @Idecboxing.