Anthony Joshua has been forced to lick his wounds after getting steamrolled by a relentless Daniel Dubois in his fourth defeat as a professional.
The brutal fifth-round stoppage came when Dubois landed his battering-ram of a right hand to counter Joshua’s right uppercut, which was thrown from far out of range.
Since then, Joshua has denied any talks of retirement, with his promoter, Eddie Hearn, even hinting at an immediate rematch between the two Brits.
However, before he decides to throw himself back into the deep end once again, Anthony Joshua must first address the catastrophic mistakes that led to his crushing loss at Wembley Stadium.
Otto Wallin admits to being surprised by Anthony Joshua’s performance against Daniel Dubois
Joshua’s former opponent, Otto Wallin, has claimed that the 34-year-old made several unforced errors prior to getting floored by Daniel Dubois in the opening round.
In that sense, Wallin attests that the version of ‘AJ’ he fought – in a fight where he was emphatically stopped in the fifth round – was vastly different to the one we saw in his last outing.
“He had his hands really low, which was very surprising to me,” Wallin told Boxing News. “He had his chin up in the air, also, and he wasn’t able to use his footwork as well.
“It looked like Joshua had been working on countering, and I felt like they thought it was going to be easy to hit Dubois, because we saw him in the [Filip] Hrgovic fight getting hit with a lot of one-twos.
“You can see early on in the fight that Joshua throws the right hand, but he can’t really land it clean on Dubois which was surprising, actually.”
Tyson Fury reacts to Anthony Joshua dropping to seventh place in new Ring Magazine heavyweight rankings
Joshua has now plummeted to seventh place in the Ring Magazine rankings following his loss to Dubois, who now sits at third below Oleksandr Usyk and Tyson Fury.
Fury, though, is convinced that he will soon reclaim his coveted number one spot, looking to avenge his defeat to Usyk when they rematch on December 21.
Ranked above Joshua are also Martin Bakole, Agit Kabayel, Zhilei Zhang and Joseph Parker – all of whom are considered to be four of the division’s most seasoned contenders.
So now, with the two-time world heavyweight champion looking to climb back up the rankings, it is fair to say that he has a long road ahead of him.