Anthony Joshua’s promoter, Eddie Hearn, has expressed confidence that his client and Daniel Dubois will most likely fight for the IBF title currently held by Ukrainian Oleksandr Usyk, PUNCH Sports Extra reports.
Dubois won the interim IBF heavyweight title on June 1 with a stunning eighth-round TKO victory over the previously undefeated Filip Hrgovic in Saudi Arabia.
SunSport reports that Joshua and Dubois are now in talks over a huge domestic dust-up at Wembley on either October 20 or 21 and Hearn is confident that the IBF title will be on the line.
“Will the Joshua-Dubois fight be for a title? For that, we need Usyk to be honest and admit that he doesn’t want to fight Dubois, who is the mandatory challenger. Usyk should fight him, but he has a rematch with Fury.
“Joshua and Dubois will fight for the IBF title, while all other belts will be on the line in the Usyk-Fury rematch. Then, the winners of these fights could face each other for the undisputed championship,” said Hearn.
The rematch between Usyk and Tyson Fury is scheduled for December 21, a month after Joshua and Dubois’ proposed bout.
Joshua has rediscovered himself with four wins on the bounce, the most recent being his brutal second-round KO of former UFC heavyweight champion Francis Ngannou.
However, he’s refusing to overlook Dubois, who bounced back from his TKO loss to Usyk with successive stoppages of Jarrell Miller and Hrgovic.
The former two-time unified heavyweight champion said, “I’ve got to pick them off one by one.
“It’s not going to be easy, but that’s my mentality. So come one, come all… He (Dubois) has been in tougher fights, so he becomes hardened.
“He has worked his way up the ladder, we’ll see what happens in the near future. Wembley, O2, York Hall – wherever they put me, I’m happy to fight. Any venue, I’ll turn up and do my job.”
