Last night at Wembley, unbeaten red-hot British heavyweight Daniel Dubois overcame, by his own admission, the toughest test of his now 11-fight pro career as he took out a game and dangerous Richard Lartey in the fourth-round of an exciting fight.
Now 11-0(10), the 21-year-old said afterwards that it was a case of “lesson learned,” Dubois reflecting on how he had been tagged by a couple of hard shots during what he correctly said was a “firefight.”
Lartey, who is now 14-2(11), managed to catch Dubois with his right hand and the punch did have a brief effect on the towering Londoner. Dubois took the shot well though, and he came back in style to take out the man from Accra, Ghana. It was all over in the fourth, when Dubois landed a right hand/left-hand combo to the chin, sending Lartey down heavily.
Dubois and Lartey really went for it in the third-round, this the most exciting round of the short fight, the two swinging with abandon. Lartey was guilty of excessive holding along the way, yet when he did let his hands go and fight hard the danger Lartey posed was evident. As Dubois said in the post-fight interview, last night’s fight was very much a learning experience for him. If it wasn’t the toughest test of his now two-year pro career, last night’s slugfest was certainly the most exciting fight of his career so far.
Dubois showed he has a chin to go along with his crushing power, and though he did get a little crazy in there at times, he got the job done in the end. Dubois is in absolutely no rush at age 21 and we await his next fight with great interest. Whether this next fight will be against fellow unbeaten Brit Joe Joyce remains to be seen, yet the thinking is that at some stage these two will clash. And what a thriller that fight will certainly be.
Both men are of course now under the same promoter in Frank Warren. Joyce said he will box a warm-up fight on May 18th.
On the undercard: Lerrone Richards (12-0, 3 KOs) defeated Tommy Langford (21-4, 6 KOs) by a 12 round unanimous decision
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