JEFF POWELL: How Daniel Dubois swallowed Anthony Joshua alive

Daniel Dubois pulled off the astonishment of this century, threw enough right hooks to catch a whale never mind knock out Anthony Joshua and dramatically launched world heavyweight boxing into it’s next generation.

The 27-year-old Londoner not only retained his IBF championship but also exploded the myth which had the boxing majority believing that Joshua at nigh on 35 could be recycled into a three-time world heavyweight champion.

For Britain’s Olympic gold medallist and long-reigning master of the UK ring, retirement looks more likely than joining that elite company. For Dubois — after one of the most amazing nights Wembley or any another arena has witnessed — the world is his oyster.

For starters, he swallowed Joshua alive here. Four knockdowns in less than five rounds were only the half of it. From the onset, in the shape of a huge right for the first knockdown, Joshua was lurching and lunging through a fog of despair.

Had the referee played it strictly by the rules he would have taken at least an eight count in every round. Of two giants advertised as the heaviest punchers in boxing today, Dubois was a cannon against a pistol.

What will hurt Joshua most of all — more even than failing to wrest the IBF belt from the young defending champion’s waist — is that his fabled left jab was out-classed. Just brushed aside.

AJ is left only with admiration for continuing to stagger back to his feet from such brain-scrambling blows.

Disbelief, also, that before the kill shot landed in the fifth round he summoned a Hail Mary of his own which stopped Dubois in his tracks to glory. If only for a moment before he was reduced to sleeping like a curled up baby on the canvas.

The future of heavyweight boxing has been re-written, the fortunes invested in the hardest game by Saudi Arabia re-directed.

Whether the long-awaited — maybe too long if we’re honest — Battle of Britain between Joshua and Tyson Fury ever happens must now be in question.

There is a new ruler of the ring and a hundred million dollar fight without him in one corner does not seem quite so entrancing a prospect.

Not even the most stunning pre-fight show ever put on, with all its pyrotechnics, could upstage Dynamite Daniel.

The stadium filled gradually as 96,000 ticket holders making sure of their safety made their way cautiously to the sold-out seats. 

A new record, claimed the promoters. Well, in this new-ish Wembley anyway. Not over at the old place with the Twin Towers. On an April afternoon in 1923, in the first football match played at the original Wembley, Bolton Wanderers won the FA Cup by beating West Ham United 2-0 in what became known as the White Horse Final.

It was so named because a police stallion called Billy made the kick off possible by nudging scores of thousands of fans off the pitch to a yard or so behind the touchlines.

The official attendance of 126,407 for the game included King George V, who was among the tiny minority sitting down. Unofficial estimates of the multitude standing on the terraces ranged between 300,000 and 330,000.

The only royal in attendance to watch Joshua and Dubois in combat was the Gypsy King.

There were roars of welcome when Tyson Fury took his seat, a ringside armchair adjacent to Oleksandr Usyk who he is due to face in a rematch for the rest of the heavyweight belts in Riyadh during Christmas week.

Win that, or lose a second time to the Ukrainian war mascot, Fury watched in hope that his next appearance at Wembley will be in another Brit-blockbuster, the long heralded showdown with Joshua. Although Saudi Arabia are at the planning stage of an even more monumental stadium in the desert.

Either way, there are more mega-millions to be made by these Goliaths of the prize-ring. As long as they keep delivering Sheikh, Rattle and Roll thrillers.

This time it was the turn of Joshua and Dubois to keep the Arab paymasters on the edge of their seats.

In the alphabet world of big-time boxing AJ and DDD were sold by their promoters as big hitters who would give all in their renowned power to blast their way to the IBF title. Thereby keeping the Riyadh Season on the road.

Dubois and Joshua had played their part in the build-up, engaging in an angry spat on a TV promo, then each threatening to flatten the other.

Otherwise during fight week Joshua, accustomed as he has become to these huge occasions, had been the cool cat. Laidback, smiling and eloquent. The closer to the big night, the more tense Dubois became.

He punched a table when he objected to a question, gave curt one, two or three word answers to others.

Such is the pressure-cooker atmosphere of nights like this. The volume rising when a gaggle of celebrities are cheered to the rafters as they pop up on the giant screens. Be they A-list or Z-list.

Liam Gallagher cranked it to fever pitch with his rendition of a couple of hits which will feature in the Oasis reunion tour.

Cometh the gladiators, cometh more serious ear-drum bursting. The joint was positively jumping on this autumn night as Dubois and Joshua entered a bear-pit through rings of fire and beneath fireworks bursting into the night sky above the stadium.

The challenger initially entered to the strains of The Godfather — as befitted his senior status in this conflagration — with Dubois accompanied by his trainer Don Charles, who had been reported as sacked earlier in the week.

The national anthem of Saudi Arabia, who had bankrolled this north London extravaganza, and God Save The King were sung with differing levels of gusto before Michael Buffer pronounced them Ready to Rumble.

After the spectacle, this fight had a lot to live up to. Thankfully, it did just that.