Steve Bunce column: Daniel Dubois can't rely on 'puncher's chance' to dethrone Oleksandr Usyk

If Daniel Dubois goes in against Oleksandr Usyk thinking all he's got is a puncher's chance, he's got no chance at all.

He will need an awful lot more than a single punch or a couple of punches to beat Usyk.

For Usyk to get hit on the chin and be knocked out at any point in the 12 rounds, you need to hope he has been preparing in a bar on a beach somewhere for the past two months. And we know that isn't the case.

Dubois has got a better boxing brain than people give him credit for and I can paint a case for him winning.

But let's get this right, it will be a massive shock if he does return to the United Kingdom as unified heavyweight world champion. It will be up there with Lloyd Honeyghan beating Donald Curry nearly 37 years ago.

More to Dubois than just a puncher

Dubois can't hope to outbox Usyk over 12 rounds, but he can apply some sensible pressure. Part of that pressure is the power in his right hand.

Everyone forgets that Usyk did get hit by some great shots from Anthony Joshua during the 24 rounds they shared. The Ukrainian won both fights, but did lose rounds.

I was six feet away at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium for the first fight and I was two feet away in Saudi Arabia in the rematch.

Usyk didn't dance and move and outsmart Joshua for 24 rounds. No, he outsmarted him in periods over 24 rounds. But he didn't give AJ a boxing lesson throughout the two fights.

The Dubois camp will naturally say Dubois punches harder. People in the AJ camp will disagree.

It's irrelevant, they both punch really, really hard.

The fact is Joshua made it close by being busy. Not by trying to knock Usyk out.

You've got to throw punches and let your hands go. But if you load up with big shots, you exhaust yourself. Dubois needs to throw jabs to the chest, body, shoulder, gloves.

He will have Don Charles in his corner - a smart and underrated trainer who has seen it all. If Charles can get Dubois to be a little bit tricky, a little bit slicker, then he really does have a chance.

I know that there's far more to Dubois than just a puncher.

Hostile crowd will put it on Dubois

Dubois stopped Kevin Lerena in the third round in December, despite being knocked down three times in the first

Dubois will have to do some thinking in a fight for the first time in a very long time.

The only time he has ever gone the distance was in a 10-rounder against Kevin Johnson in 2018. In each round he was learning on the job. He was adjusting his feet. He wasn't wasting his punches. He got better as it went on.

But since then he hasn't had to do a lot of thinking. I don't mean that cruelly, he's walked through most of his opponents.

Richard Lartey, Ebenezer Tetteh, Kevin Lerena (when he was dropped and hurt three times in the opening rounds), these are not top 30 heavyweights.

The one exception was the loss against Joe Joyce in November 2020. Dubois was losing rounds, even though it was a fairly competitive fight, by not adjusting or thinking.

No-one in the Dubois camp believed the Joyce fight would even be competitive, let alone dangerous. Dubois fully bought into and believed the idea that he was invincible. He went into it with completely the wrong head.

We had Dubois' former trainer Shane McGuigan on the 5 Live boxing podcast. He quite rightly pointed out that Daniel maybe doesn't seem to like the pressure of fighting on the big stage.

To say he freezes is maybe too strong, but he certainly does take some deep breaths in a big fight.

Well the pressure is certainly going to be on Dubois when he gets to Poland and realises that Usyk is being treated like a hometown hero and 40,000 people are in there with the Ukrainian flag.

It's going to feel fairly hostile in there. Dubois is going to feel it.

Dubois can shatter Fury-Usyk dreams

There are some people questioning whether Dubois is even worthy of a world-title shot.

When Joshua fought for the world title, who did he beat in the top 20? When Tyson Fury fought for the world title against Wladimir Klitschko, he'd beaten perhaps one man in the top 20.

Who had Derek Chisora or Dillian Whyte beaten to earn a shot at Tyson Fury?

There's no such thing as 'worthy' in boxing. You get where you negotiate and not what you deserve.

Dubois has been brilliantly managed, brilliantly promoted, and he's now in this position. It's as simple as that.

He got into a position to fight Trevor Bryan for the WBA 'regular' title. Bryan was no world beater. But in boxing, you don't have to beat the best, you just have to be available.

For so long the talk has been about an undisputed Fury-Usyk fight. Well Dubois may just ruin everything.

If he also wins a rematch, Dubois could walk away from two Usyk fights about £50m better off.

That is why they box. That is why they're called prize fighters.

Steve Bunce was speaking to BBC Sport's Kal Sajad.