Anthony Joshua has fallen just short of greatness

Professional athletes rarely finish their careers on their own terms. In few sports is this sad truth more violently reinforced than in boxing.

For Anthony Joshua, that career-ending moment might have arrived on Saturday night. In front of a crowd of more than 90,000 at Wembley Stadium, Joshua was pulverised over the course of five bleak and largely uncompetitive rounds by fellow Londoner, 27-year-old Daniel Dubois.

It was difficult to watch Joshua’s performance on Saturday night without a sense of what might have been. Over the past decade, Joshua has reinvigorated not only British pugilism, but also a dormant heavyweight division. When he knocked out Wladimir Klitschko at the same arena in 2017 – climbing off the canvas before felling the Ukrainian champion with a right uppercut – he appeared destined to be not only the best heavyweight of his generation, but also possibly of the 21st century. Such great expectations can now be definitively laid to rest.

In the lead-up to Saturday night’s bout, Joshua had struck a confident pose, writ large in his slogan, ‘Say Less’. Yet on Saturday night, when he came face-to-face with Dubois in the ring, he seemed oddly jittery. Fans’ concerns were confirmed in the first minute of the fight. Joshua was stiff, his hands were down and his chin was in the air. As former British world champion Carl Froch noted after the fight, he was everything you shouldn’t be in the ring. For a fighter of Joshua’s pedigree – he won gold at the 2012 London Olympic Games – his approach was inexplicable.

Dubois dropped Joshua moments into the first round. The punch that floored him was a thunderous right hand, but one Joshua should never have been caught with. Beginning from below Dubois’s waist, the punch was a long-telegraphed, bar-room haymaker. Joshua, his face unprotected and hands hovering around his chest, looked like an amateur.

Joshua tasted the canvas another three times before Dubois concluded the fight with a perfectly timed counter right-hand in the fifth. This, at least, was more of a boxer’s punch. But Joshua, who came in swinging like a rusty gate and offering a chin that said ‘hit me’, gave his adversary a generous target. Afterwards, a humble and almost resigned Joshua said his team ‘took a shot at success’ but ‘came up short’.

It seemed as if Joshua and his team had missed the point. This was more than just one defeat. It was one that Joshua, at the age of 34, will find it hard to recover from. It also marked Joshua’s second significant knockout. Post-fight, Joshua said he would ‘live to fight another day’. Those close to him – in particular his manager, Eddie Hearn – should tell him not to risk his future at a fading shot at redemption.

For British boxing fans, perhaps the most galling aspect of Johsua’s defeat is that it means any match-up with former heavyweight world champion Tyson Fury is now unlikely to happen. Fury, ringside for the fight, seemed visibly disappointed by the result. The fact that the Fury-Joshua match-up, which would be one of the biggest fights in British boxing history, has never happened should shame all those involved. The British public have been deprived of what would have been a spectacular contest.

Joshua has been a multiple world champion. Yet as successful as he’s been, there is a nagging sense that he has fallen short when it mattered. He was beaten twice by reigning heavyweight champion Oleksandr Usyk, the one world-class fighter he has been in the ring with. And he has dodged the other two big ones, namely Fury and American heavyweight Deontay Wilder. Joshua did enjoy that iconic win in 2017 over Klitschko, but by that point the Ukrainian great was 41 years old.

For over a decade now, Joshua has been the Golden Boy of British boxing. In that time, he has done much for the sport. But it’s time for someone else to step up. Whether that is Dubois, only time will tell.

Hugo Timms is an intern at spiked.