There had been plenty of speculation that when Filip Hrgovic and Daniel Dubois fight this weekend, the IBF world heavyweight title might be on the line, and now there has been a big update with regard to that possibility.
Dubois goes into the fight with Hrgovic as the underdog as Hrgovic has long been a top heavyweight contender from Croatia. That said, Dubois is coming of his best win when he stopped the huge Jarrell Miller back in December on the Day of Reckoning card in Saudi Arabia.
That end came with seconds to go and showed that Dubois had improved his mental game as in the past he has been sometimes seen as psychologically fragile having taken a knee and the full 10 count during his fight with Joe Joyce, albeit after sustaining plenty of damage to his eye, and also having been stopped in his world title shot against Oleksandr Usyk despite having success early on.
Hrgovic presents a different psychological challenge as the big man, who himself got a controversial win over Zhilei Zhang and since then has had only easy wins, claims that he scarred Dubois during a sparring session years ago.
If true Dubois may find it hard to forget that one heading into the bout, though he is much more experienced now and he showed against Miller that he is prepared to dig deep.
Speaking to Boxing Social, Hearn gave an update on the situation with the IBF world title, which it is thought would have been stripped from Oleksandr Usyk soon after he claimed all four of the major world titles after beating Tyson Fury on May 18.
“There’s got to be a process that you go through if someone’s applying for an exemption, if someone’s appealing an exemption, or if someone’s appealing to deny an exemption and that’s going to take longer than one week so it’s very unlikely that’s going to be in place for Saturday but it is likely that will be in place for the winner to fight Anthony Joshua for the IBF world title in September.”
The rest of the 5 vs. 5 card features mouth-watering fights like Deontay Wilder versus Zhang, Ray Ford against Nick Ball, Ammo Williams taking on Hamzah Sheeraz, and Craig Richards facing Willy Hutchinson.
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