Daniel Dubois stops Filip Hrgović and Deontay Wilder v Zhilei Zhang: heavyweight boxing – live | Boxing

Daniel Dubois wins by eighth-round TKO!

Round 7

What a turnaround! Dubois is walking down Hrgović, throwing and landing shots with bad intentions. Hrgović is badly bloodied from the cuts, his trunks turned from white to pink. In the closing seconds Dubois rocks his foe with a massive right hand. The referee steps in to warn him, giving Hrgović precious seconds to recover. When they resume Dubois unloads with a couple of explosive shots along the ropes and Hrgović is clearly saved by the bell! Arguably a 10-8 round for Dubois. Hrgović in serious trouble.

Guardian’s unofficial score: Dubois 10-9 Hrgović (Dubois 65-68 Hrgović)

Round 6

Hrgović does enough to shade another very active round. He’s proven to be the better boxer but Dubois looks fresher and arguably stronger. Also, Hrgović appears to be cut over his left eye. Hrgović’s conditioning has given the Briton a massive opportunity despite (almostly certainly) being down on the cards entering the back half of the schedled 12 rounds.

Guardian’s unofficial score: Dubois 9-10 Hrgović (Dubois 55-59 Hrgović)

Round 5

Hrgović looks gassed but he continues to pursue Dubois wherever he goes. The blood is really leaking down into his right eye. Hrgović lands a massive one-two combination, but Dubois continues to answer with heavy shots of his own. Both men have all but abandoned the body. There’s very little to separate the pair after another action-packed round, but Hrgović seems to have landed the harder and more significant blows.

Guardian’s unofficial score: Dubois 9-10 Hrgović (Dubois 46-49 Hrgović)

Round 4

More reckless two-way action but Hrgović is getting the better of the exchanges overall. Dubois’s uncertain footwark is doing him a disservice. Hrgović is being troubled by the blood from the cut. Apparently, the official ruling is the cut was caused by a punch and not an accidental clash of heads as initially indicated. Another round for the Croat, but he’s starting to look fatigued.

Guardian’s unofficial score: Dubois 9-10 Hrgović (Dubois 37-39 Hrgović)

Round 3

These guys are slugging away at one another. Hrgović continues to score with the right but he’s leaving himself open. More right hands from Hrgović, who continues to tag Dubois upstairs. It’s some of the leakiest defense that we can recall in a top-flight heavyweight fight, but it’s been a fun scrap so far. Close round but Hrgović did more down the stretch to nick it.

Guardian’s unofficial score: Dubois 9-10 Hrgović (Dubois 28-29 Hrgović)

Round 2

Dubois lands a right hand early in the second but Hrgović fires back immediately. They have set a frantic pace; the chances of this one going the distance are remote. Dubois is still using a thudding jab to hold Hrgović off and it’s landing with the force of a power punch. Better work overall from Dubois in this round. He lands a powerful left hand near the bell and ties up before the Croatian can answer. There’s a cut on Hrgović’s forehead but the referee as ruled it came from an accidental clash of heads.

Guardian’s unofficial score: Dubois 10-9 Hrgović (Dubois 19-19 Hrgović)

Round 1

There’s the bell! Dubois, looking drier than you normally see fighters right before the first round, gets off to a positive start. He’s holding the center of the ring early and boxing behind a solid jab. Hrgović lands a crisp right cross. Then another. Oh boy. He’s punishing Dubois with the right hand, landing one after the other, turning his aggressive against him. Hrgović has landed no fewer than a half-dozen flush right hands in the first two minutes. Dubois holds on, showing indications of fatigue already.

Guardian’s unofficial score: Dubois 9-10 Hrgović (Dubois 9-10 Hrgović)

Ring announcer Michael Buffer has emerged from the tunnel. We’ve had a playing of Saudi Arabia’s national anthem, a brief instrumental rendition that’s played through quickly. Dubois makes his entrance at a canter to Michael Jackson’s Bad. Now it’s Hrgović, the Olympic bronze medalist from Zagreb, who paces to the ring with menace.

Buffer has made the fighter introductions. The final instructions have been given, the seconds are out and we’ll pick it up with round-by-round coverage from here!

Here’s a look at how Dubois and Hrgović measure up. Dubois, the Matchroom fighter who goes off as a roughly 2-1 underdog, is conceding an inch in height and four inches in reach to Queensbury’s Hrgović.

With Queensbury leading 6-0 in the team standings after three fights, Hearn and Matchroom will need stoppages by Hrgović and Wilder just to salvage a draw.

There could be even more at stake than meets the eye in the next fight between IBF mandatory challenger Filip Hrgović and Daniel Dubois. Specifically, the winner could be upgraded to world champion if Oleksandr Usyk relinquishes the belt or is stripped by the sanctioning body.

More from Reuters:

The BBC and talkSPORT reported on Friday that the contest had been “tentatively sanctioned” by the IBF to be for the interim heavyweight title.

The winner, if the interim title is confirmed, would then be upgraded should currently undisputed champion Usyk shed the IBF belt before a scheduled rematch with Tyson Fury in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, in December.

Fury’s manager Frank Warren also represents fellow Briton Dubois.

Croatia’s Hrgović is unbeaten in 17 professional fights while Dubois has a record 20 wins and two defeats, including a loss to Ukrainian Usyk last August.

Usyk has requested an exemption from the US-based IBF to defend his belt against Fury, whom he beat this month to become undisputed champion, rather than have to face Hrgović first.

The BBC quoted the IBF saying it “does not have a timeline as to when the decision will be made on Usyk’s exception request”.

The IBF has previously stripped champions of titles for failing to fight mandatory opponents, with Fury losing a heavyweight belt in December 2015, 10 days after he took it from Ukrainian Wladimir Klitschko.

Britain’s Lennox Lewis was also stripped of the IBF heavyweight belt in 2002.

“You really don’t want the belts to be fragmented, but you’ve got a guy (Hrgović) who has been ordered ages ago and has been waiting and waiting and waiting,” said the Croatian’s promoter Eddie Hearn.

“Maybe the winner of that has AJ (Anthony Joshua) next in line for the IBF. You can’t ignore your mandatory challenger for two or three years.

“He (Hrgović) is told, ‘You can’t get your title shot until the summer of 2025.’ It’s not fair. I get both sides of the argument, but I do expect the IBF belt to come vacant.”

Hrgović and Dubois should be making their ring entrances at Riyadh’s Kingdom Arena any moment now.

“I’m happy that I won,” Bivol says. “My [coaches] are happy. My team are happy. It makes me happy.”

Asked whether adjusting to a replacement opponent on a month’s notice created any unanticipated challenges, the Russian says: “We are professional boxers. We have to change our tactics at any moment, any second, even in the ring, and I have enough time to change my preparation for another fighter, the different fighter than Beterbiev.”

At this point Turki Alalshikh, chairman of the General Entertainment Authority and the driving force behind Saudi Arabia’s expanding influence in boxing, interrupts Bivol’s in-ring interview to announce that Bivol’s fight with Beterbiev for the undisputed light heavyweight title has been rescheduled for 12 October in Riyadh.

Bivol’s reaction is short and to the point: “I feel great. I need to be in focus. I have to be ready for October 12th. This is what I wanted.”

Dmitry Bivol has defended his WBA light heavyweight title in style. After a couple of rounds where he curiously appeared reluctant to let his hands go, the Russian backed Zinad into a corner with a flurry of 12 unanswered blows until referee Howard Foster intervened at the 2:06 mark of round six. It’s Bivol’s first win inside the distance since 2018, ending a drought of nine fights without a knockout, and it will only stoke the anticipation for his four-belt unification showdown with Artur Beterbiev.

We’d be remiss to not mention another fight of note, currently unfolding beneath the Kingdom Arena lights. Unrelated to the 5 vs 5 competition, Russia’s Dmitry Bivol is defending his WBA light heavyweight title against Malik Zinad of Libya. The unbeaten Bivol, a fixture on pound-for-pound lists since a 2022 win over Canelo Álvarez, was supposed to be fighting Artur Beterbiev tonight in a hotly anticipated four-belt unification fight for the undisputed title at 175lbs, but Beterbiev was forced to withdraw due to a ruptured meniscus suffered in training camp last month.

As a replacement opponent called up on a month’s notice in his first world title challenge against one of boxing’s most gifted technicians, Zinad is a 14-1 underdog on merit. He’s already been floored once, courtesy of a three-punch combination from Bivol punctuated by a crisp left hook. They’re into the fourth round and while Zinad has made things a touch more competitive than expected, it would seem to be little more than a matter of time against the far busier and more accurate Bivol.

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Preamble

Bryan will be here shortly. In the meantime here’s the big, erm, boxing news of the past 24 hours.