Ben Davison was brutally honest in the aftermath of that horror night for Anthony Joshua at Wembley Stadium.
Joshua’s bid to become a three-time world heavyweight champion ended in disastrous fashion on Saturday when he was battered to a brutal knockout defeat inside five one-sided rounds by IBF king Daniel Dubois.
AJ (now 28-4) was on the floor four times, the final time being counted out by referee Marcus McDonnell following a devastating short right counter from Dubois (22-2). It was as conclusive a defeat as one could see, and Davison pulled no punches afterwards.
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The trainer and his team had been showered with praise in recent months after preparing Joshua for two absolutely brilliant performances in those demolition jobs on Otto Wallin last December and then Francis Ngannou in March. And Davison says with that in mind, it’s only fair they take the criticism after this brutal loss.
Ben Davison on Joshua loss
Speaking at the post-fight press conference, he said: “I’d just like to say that me and my team have received a hell of a lot of credit for good performances that he’s had, so it’s important that we take responsibility for the bad performance as well. So we’re willing to do that.”
Davison spoke in more depth about what actually happened inside the right, and admitted that Joshua just was never able to implement the gameplan in what turned out to be a wild night of heavyweight action.
“We knew Dubois, he returns all the time when you jab, so that was something we were looking to capitalise on. For whatever reason, things didn’t get going as we’d have liked to in the early part of the fight. That was just one of the things we was looking to pick up on – obviously there was a few other things as well. But just didn’t manage to get the things we was looking to get going, going early.
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“A couple of things we were looking to capitalise on, like Eddie said at the end, there was a couple of very very very short spells of it, one of those was when he managed to land that right hand, there was a couple of things we wanted to do to follow up moments like that, and just didn’t apply it the way we’d prepared to unfortunately. But by that point a lot had gone on, he’s not thinking straight, very difficult pill to swallow.”
