One punch from immortality: the extraordinary story of Daniel Dubois

Times

06-07-2025

On a stiflingly hot day in June, the world heavyweight champion boxer Daniel Dubois walks into his gym in Borehamwood, Hertfordshire, without so much as a nod or a word of acknowledgment to his training team. 'I used to take offence and say, 'Good morning, Daniel,' but it's not because he doesn't want to say hello. He's programmed,' says his trainer, Don Charles, who once coached a young Anthony Joshua. 'I've been doing this for 25-odd years. I've never met anyone like Daniel — and I'm not likely to either. It's extraordinary.'
For the next two hours Charles leads Dubois, 27, through a series of punching drills using a pair of mitts. The sound echoes like gunshots around the steel barn, spooking the horses in the neighbouring field. Sweat pours from his 6ft 5in, 18st frame. All the while Dubois's equally imposing father, Stanley (who is also known as Dave), watches from a wooden bench at the ringside without ever removing his heavy coat. Beads of moisture begin to trickle down his forehead too.
The spell breaks when Charles signals an end to the session. Dubois rips the tape off his hands, revealing a striking row of scars on his knuckles. These kind of marks are a workplace hazard for any boxer, however Dubois explains that they don't stem from throwing punches but rather from a regimen of home workouts that began when he was about five years old. Stanley, the staunchly Christian father of 11 children born from two marriages, raised the seven youngest, including Daniel, by himself in a council flat in Deptford, southeast London. Every morning, instead of attending school, the children would do press-ups on closed fists in the living room while reciting Psalm 144:1 from the Bible.
'I kept it on a spiritual level. I would walk into the room and say, 'Blessed', and they would say, 'Blessed be the Lord, my rock, who strengthens my hands for war and my fingers for battle.' We were on a mission and they were operating like soldiers from a young age. They wouldn't eat or drink [until they were finished]. That made them into who they are today,' Stanley, 64, says. 'It just became normal to do them for three or four hours,' Dubois adds stoically.
Dubois is now on the cusp of becoming the most decorated British heavyweight of this century. Since turning professional at 19 (much to the dismay of Team GB, who believed he could win an Olympic gold medal as an amateur), Dubois has won 22 of his 24 fights; 21 by knockout. In September he knocked out Anthony Joshua, who was eight years his senior, in front of a postwar record crowd of 96,000 at Wembley Stadium.
Now, on July 19, he will face Oleksandr Usyk, against whom both Joshua and Tyson Fury twice fell short, for the undisputed heavyweight title. The last Briton to earn this distinction was Lennox Lewis in 1999. 'He's been through the trials and tribulations. He's the king-slayer,' Lewis said recently of Dubois.
In Stanley's mind it is his son's destiny. Before Daniel was born Stanley claims he was 'visited by spirits' who instructed him to put his future progeny into boxing and mould them into champions. Caroline, 24, the middle sibling of the seven, also became a world champion last year, making Dubois and her the first British brother and sister to simultaneously hold that title. 'I knew my plan would work because what I saw was as real as you. It was my vision and it turned into theirs. I had the dream and they're delivering it,' Stanley says.
The seven children were all home schooled except for Caroline. Unless they were playing sports, the children rarely socialised outside of the family, nor did they have regular access to the internet. To this day Dubois still lives with Stanley, who cooks all his meals. He is quieter than his father, a little awkward, with stilted conversation and a goofy smile. He has never tried a sip of alcohol and he doesn't have a smartphone. Stanley's methods have drawn concern from the authorities more than once, but Dubois compares his father to a prophet. He sees himself as his disciple.
'To me it never felt strict or like I was being forced. I love doing this,' Dubois says. 'It was the discipline of my father, keeping us safe and out of the way of distractions. We never looked at our surroundings too much. We just looked at where we were going — the training, the journey. It's like a force we've created. He had the vision and we've been carrying it through.'
The fight against Usyk, 38, arguably the greatest heavyweight since Lewis, is the culmination of the apparition that has governed their lives. Dubois is expected to earn more than £5 million if he wins. 'Where can you go from undisputed? It is the ultimate,' Stanley says. 'I think he's going to slaughter Usyk. And when they don't need me any more, the job is done.'
Charles, 63, has coached enough boxers to know that even the strongest will can evaporate in one punch. Still, he too is swept up in the sense of divine providence. 'If [Stanley] was a cult leader, he's got me,' he says. 'He is mad, granted, but there is a genius living in there. He's almost got this gift to predict things and everything he has told me has materialised.' significant test came last September in the all-British duel with Anthony Joshua. Without even throwing a punch, Dubois had been promoted to IBF champion after Usyk vacated the belt last June. The fight at Wembley was his chance to win the belt in the ring.
On the day of the fight Stanley threw a party for about thirty of his friends at the family home in Abridge, Essex. From there they left for the stadium in a convoy of luxury cars and continued their revelry in Dubois's dressing room until his horrified promoter, Frank Warren, intervened and threw out anyone who was not part of the immediate team. 'We were dancing and having a great time. We weren't worried. It was like we had already won. We were celebrating,' Stanley says.
The crowd, however, were behind Joshua, who treated Dubois with derision. Despite being the official titleholder, Dubois was made to walk to the ring first. He earned about £3.5 million, less than half Joshua's earnings. Almost as soon as the first bell rang, it was obvious who would win. Dubois knocked Joshua down in the first round, a left hook sent him sprawling again in the third and Joshua was down once more in the fourth. The knockout in the fifth was sickening as a right hand crumpled Joshua face first into the canvas.
'I was ready to prove that I am a world champion — and I did it. He was the man when I was growing up and I took the baton from him,' says Dubois, who was 17 years old when he first trained with Joshua. 'I feel like we are on a journey from the womb to the tomb. We haven't achieved the dream yet. We've got to beat Usyk now, but that was a step in the right direction.'
Dubois has already fought the Ukrainian once before, in Poland in August 2023. After the Russia invasion in 2022, Usyk had driven into Kyiv as thousands fled and signed up with a local territorial defence battalion, patrolling the streets with a machinegun. His sporting success was seen as a symbol of the country's resistance, an inspiration to soldiers on the front lines, and many Ukrainians crossed the border to support him in Wroclaw for the Dubois fight. Usyk stopped Dubois in the ninth round, but the fight was marred by controversy. In the fifth round Dubois had dropped Usyk with an uppercut to the lower abdomen, but the referee ruled that it was below the beltline — and therefore illegal — and gave the champion several minutes to recover. Dubois and his team maintain it was a perfect shot and believe the officials were biased.
'I have sympathy for Usyk because I too was in a war. He's a special fighter, he's a genius, but there is no way to dress it up …' Charles says. He was a Biafran child soldier in the Nigerian civil war, who cleaned guns and survived on bushmeat after his village decamped to the jungle. His family moved to the UK in 1974.
Dubois has never been one to bother with boxing's ritual trash talk, but the emphatic nature of his win against Joshua helped exorcise the lingering sense of injustice. 'I'm full of confidence now. I guess you get that when you've won a world title. You feel like the man again,' he says. 'I'm just in fight mode. We had Usyk close. I've been in there with him, so I know what to expect and I'm going to take it to him.'
Dubois's youngest brother, Solomon, 12, nods approvingly while skipping in the corner of the gym. They live with Stanley in an eight-bedroom mansion in Essex, which they bought in 2020 for £1.5 million. Stanley's white and burgundy Rolls-Royce sits on the driveway, dwarfing Daniel's Porsche 911. The home has a fully equipped gym and there is a large swimming pool in the back garden.
Inside, a giant wooden sculpture of a lion dominates the hallway — Dubois is named after Daniel, the prophet who was thrown into the den. Another of a crocodile guards the living room, which is quite bare except for a beautiful harp. 'I've been having a couple of lessons a week,' Dubois says. Solomon, who Stanley says is the most talented boxer in the family and competes in national competitions, plays the piano and the saxophone. Also home schooled, he is being tutored in Mandarin because his father wants him to become a star in China.
Stanley puts his spiritual vision down to his belief that he is a descendant of the Israelites. As a child he was no fan of boxing. 'I got punched in the nose once and never went back,' he says. The child of Grenadian immigrants, he was raised in west London but became homeless at 16 years old after fathering twins and slept on the floor of a laundrette. He then made a small fortune as a market trader selling posters in London, New York and the Caribbean in the 1980s. It was around this time that he met his second wife, Michelle, the mother of Dubois and his six younger siblings. They agreed Stanley would raise the children by himself, although he says they are still in contact with their mother.
'I sort of took control of everything because I'm a master of what I do and anyone at that time could see that,' he says.
In Deptford Stanley's unorthodox approach to child-raising attracted scrutiny. Dubois says he got his own bedroom because he was 'the chosen one', but space in the flat was limited. 'You can do amazing things in a stable like where Jesus was born,' Stanley says dismissively. Once, when the siblings were running laps around the estate, a police officer stopped them and asked if they were being forced to exercise. They shook their heads and from the balcony Stanley shooed the officer away.
'They'd prefer it if they were burgling someone's house,' he bellows so loudly his eyes bulge. 'I don't think I was strict. I think I saved them from the world because is not a very pleasant place if you are a young black kid in south London. There were a lot of crazy things happening in the community, a lot of stabbings, a lot of kids getting murdered. I wasn't going to send my children into that situation, so I kept them on the straight and narrow.'
At the time women's boxing was still banned in many amateur gyms. According to Stanley, after coaches realised Caroline had been disguising herself as 'Colin' so she could fight against boys as a nine-year-old, they began 'harassing' him until he relented and sent her to school.
Dubois went to his first boxing class aged seven at the Peacock Gym in Canning Town, where Lewis once trained. Stanley invited scoffs when he introduced Dubois as the future heavyweight champion of the world, but his son's athleticism and focus was undeniable. 'I used to chase the other kids around the ring. They had no idea what we were doing at home,' Dubois says, laughing.
To bulk Dubois up, Stanley used to cook him an entire chicken for breakfast every day. 'I was amazed he could eat it,' he says. 'I just remember stuffing it in my mouth, but I was training really hard,' Dubois adds. When he was 12, one of his opponents was so afraid to fight him that he vomited on the floor.
Dubois's aura in the ring made his awkwardness outside of it more pronounced. 'At a certain age I just got so into myself and shy,' he admits. When Stanley took him to the markets and asked him to call customers over to their poster stall, Dubois would freeze and stare back at him blankly. 'They were coming from isolation in a way. They'd not been in the classroom or in the playground, so they didn't really know how to interact with people,' Stanley says. Dubois didn't seek out friends when trying other sports such as swimming and the javelin. 'Discipline as much as training becomes a way of life,' Dubois says.
Their father's domineering influence eventually caused a rift in the Dubois family. Caroline, who represented Team GB at the Tokyo Olympics in 2021, abruptly left the home with two of her younger siblings two years ago. 'I went to school, my brothers didn't. I used to travel a lot [for international amateur competitions]. I think that helped open up my mind, helped change my perspective. I saw how other people treated their children. I saw what was acceptable and what I wanted to accept. My boundaries got bigger,' she told the boxing website Seconds Out in October.
Stanley is reluctant to be drawn on the split — it is believed Caroline has estranged herself from him and Dubois — but he remains steadfast about his parenting style. Once, when he took Solomon to the hospital with a stomach ache, a concerned nurse reported him to social services. 'They phoned me up and said, 'Why isn't Solomon at school?' I said, 'Look, my kids don't need any help because my son Daniel is 19 and he's already a millionaire and he never went to school. I think you might need some help from me!' he says, erupting into laughter.
Dubois doesn't seem sure if he will ever move out. Stanley still drives him to every gym session and the pair are rarely ever separated outside of media duties and menial tasks, though Stanley does leave the room to let Dubois speak for himself.
Dubois was reported to be dating Raissa Foxx, a Brazilian influencer, last year. She gave birth to a son, Zion, in March, but Dubois has not commented on their relationship. The only time he has lived away from the family home for a sustained period was after he joined the GB Boxing team in January 2015 and stayed in a flat in Sheffield four nights a week. 'I got homesick a lot. I used to call my dad and tell him how shit it was, but I just did my thing, beat these guys up and got as much experience as I could,' he says.
After word spread that he had outdone Joshua in training, the promoter Frank Warren persuaded Dubois to sign a lucrative professional contract instead of pursuing an Olympic gold medal in Tokyo. Dubois breezed through his first 15 fights, knocking out all but one of his opponents.
A bout against another former GB Boxing team-mate, the 2016 Olympic silver medallist Joe Joyce, in November 2020 was supposed to be the launchpad to a world title. Dubois was ahead on the judges' scorecards when he suddenly knelt down during the tenth round, prompting the referee to start counting to ten. He remained hunched over until the fight was called off, dabbing at a hideous swelling that had formed around his left eye that Joyce had been targeting with merciless precision. The backlash afterwards was unsympathetic. David Haye, a former world heavyweight champion, who Dubois had looked up to as a teenager, publicly accused the 23-year-old of quitting, the cardinal sin of boxing.
Back in the dressing room, Dubois admitted the pain had been unbearable. 'It's shooting into my brain,' he said. He was rushed to hospital but the doctors said they couldn't operate until the swelling had eased.
'I heard them talking about me losing my eyesight,' Dubois recalls. Six days later a specialist confirmed that his orbital bone was fractured in several places and he had retinal bleeding. 'A lot of people jumped on the bandwagon [criticising him] but it comes back to that thing of what does a boxer have to give? His eyesight?' Warren says. 'He actually saved his career by taking that knee.' Dubois reflects on the criticism unemotionally: 'I didn't give myself time to mope over it. I thought I'll turn them into my fans.'
Dubois sacked his trainer, Martin Bowers, afterwards and steadily rebuilt his career with four victories under Shane McGuigan, who had already been training Caroline. However, the family split in 2023 forced him to look for a new trainer again. With just 14 weeks until the fight against Usyk, he teamed up with Charles in Finchley, north London. At such short notice the veteran trainer did what he could. 'The trust wasn't there when we were telling him what to do,' Charles says.
After the defeat Charles brought a sports psychologist into the gym. 'They lasted two weeks and got the boot, though not from me,' he says. However, their insight proved valuable. 'He said, 'Have you noticed that when you speak to Daniel, he looks to his father first? Use that.'
Previous coaches had tried to diminish Stanley's influence. Charles instead encouraged him to sit front and centre during training so that he could help relay his instructions. 'When the dad says something to him, it enters. He takes it as gospel,' Charles says. Stanley is more forthright. 'When [the children] hear my voice it's like they're hearing the voice of God.'
Charles concedes that he and Stanley still 'lock horns', but there is a deep mutual respect. 'He's a big man,' Charles says. 'People fear him before they get to know him, but there's a sweetness in there. What I've managed to do — and it's been difficult — is to tap into that.'
Dubois has been transformed by the partnership with Charles. In December 2023 he won a gruelling comeback fight against Jarrell Miller that many had expected him to lose. 'There was a bit of shedding the demons. I just went out and gave it everything,' Dubois says.
The victory steeled what many perceived to be Dubois's mental weakness. Previously shy and reserved at media events, he began to come out of his shell. When his next opponent, the Croatian heavyweight Filip Hrgovic, said he had 'no balls' in a prefight interview, Dubois turned to the host and said, 'Let's put this c*** to sleep.' 'I nearly fell off my chair,' Warren says, laughing. 'I'd never heard him swear.' Dubois won in the eighth round.
Stanley used to play the young Dubois old tapes of heavyweight fights so he could picture his future. One of their favourites to watch was Lennox Lewis. 'My dad always said I'd be a champion like him,' Dubois says. An extraordinary combination of faith and discipline has now brought him to within one fight of that rarefied air. 'Ultimately, it's about how you're going to make and change history,' Dubois says. In his and Stanley's minds, it has already been written.