Heavyweight contender Danniel Dubois is a huge underdog in the upcoming showdown with WBO, IBF, IBO, WBA world champion Oleksandr Usyk. 

Many of the critics are pointing to Dubois' last performance, which came against Kevin Lerena in December. During that fight, Dubois went down three times. He was able to overcome those scares to drop and stop Lerena in the third.

Dubois was trained by Shane McGuigan for that fight. They parted ways earlier this year, with Dubois hiring veteran coach Don Charles.

In the win over Lerena, the British boxer suffered a bad knee injury and seemed to have issues putting weight on his leg as the fight played out. 

According to Charles, there were pre-existing issues with the knee. 

"It hasn’t been well documented but he was told prior that he needed attention to his knee," Charles told The Daily Mail. "They didn’t know when it was going to go but it was going to go. They took a gamble and lo and behold it went in the fight. Remarkably, for a guy who was meant to be a quitter got up with one leg. Shane didn’t panic and Dubois still brutally knocked him out.

"They were flying with half an engine and landed the plane successfully. He never should have won the fight because he couldn’t put weight on the leg. Lerena was the first name on my list to come for sparring for Daniel ahead of the Usyk fight. He refused it and I know why."

Charles predicts that everyone will see a very different Dubois this Saturday night in Poland.

"We’re fighting a man who is very good, but very beatable," Charles said. ‘I’m still finding things about this young man [Dubois]. He can have a ruck – I didn’t know that. He was sparring Moses Itauma, a very highly-rated fighter. They were having it off in sparring and that’s when I saw another side of Daniel that I didn’t know. There is a dog in Daniel Dubois and if he has to dog it, he can. When Moses came, he brought the dog out of Daniel. I thought, “Oh my god”. Me and my colleagues all looked at each other – we didn’t know he had that.

"The only chance we’ve been given is that Daniel is a puncher and we’ve got a punchers chance. Do you what? We’ll take that. If it’s documented that Usyk has never been dropped, we’re going to be the first to do it. [Dubois] will go down in history forever and he’s about to do that. We keep reminding him about that. Muhammad Ali shook the world when he beat Sonny Liston. He repeated it again against Forman, who was untouchable at the time. It’s about to happen again. We are up for it man. Usyk said he was hungry for this fight. We are starving."