When Britain’s former IBF heavyweight champion Daniel Dubois was recently asked to name the six British world heavyweight champions of the 21st century, he managed to name only three. The three that came to Dubois’ mind were Lennox Lewis, Anthony Joshua and eventually Daniel Dubois. “There’s not that many, is there?” he said, before being reminded of the names Tyson Fury, David Haye and Fabio Wardley, his opponent this Saturday. “I know I did bad,” Dubois said. “My brain’s scrambled.”

He needn’t have felt too stupid, Dubois. Anyone put on the spot for a bit of mindless, brain-rot social media content is liable to fold under pressure – either that or lose the will to live – and he is not the first person to sink to the level of the game being played in the name of “banter” or “fun”. 

That said, it was interesting to see him struggle to name Fabio Wardley as one of the six British world heavyweight champions, particularly given it is Wardley’s WBO heavyweight title Dubois will hope to snatch this weekend. Perhaps, given the short nature of Wardley’s reign (he has yet to make a defence), and the fact he was “given” the belt after it was vacated by Oleksandr Usyk, means it is easy to forget that he even owns it. Or perhaps Dubois overlooking Wardley, and the others, is indicative of how easy it is for a heavyweight to claim a version of the heavyweight title these days and how, as a result, the significance of the achievement is in turn diminished. 

Either way, Dubois, a former belt-holder, meets a current belt-holder on Saturday in Manchester, England. It is a fight of importance not only because there is a WBO heavyweight title up for grabs, but because both Wardley, the champion, and Dubois, the challenger, hail from Great Britain. That in itself helps to elevate it; make it something other than just one more heavyweight fight for another slice of the heavyweight pie. 

As we saw last weekend with Naoya Inoue vs. Junto Nakatani and David Benavidez vs. Gilberto Ramirez, there is a special ingredient to fights between boxers who share nationality and often these fights mean more to us than others. At the time the interest in them tends to be much greater and then, with the passing of time, we find that they are a lot easier to remember, too. Even Daniel Dubois, if tested, might be able to name one or two of the few all-British heavyweight title fights of the 21st century. He did, after all, appear in one of them. In fact, the one time Dubois has faced a fellow Brit in a world heavyweight title fight, he produced his best performance to date. So, if he can’t remember that, his brain really is “scrambled”.

As for the other all-British world heavyweight title fights of the modern era, it’s a bit of a mixed bag. Perhaps the best of them was a 1993 encounter between Lennox Lewis and Frank Bruno in Cardiff, Wales, but that belongs to the last century, not this one. The offerings this century have been of a slightly different standard, and yet still we have seen some compelling matchups and, notably, some conclusive finishes. 

Here, for the benefit of Daniel Dubois, is a brief history of the all-British world heavyweight title fights of the 21st century so far.  

 

4) David Haye TKO 3 Audley Harrison

November 13, 2010

Manchester, England

When David Haye defended his WBA heavyweight title against fellow Londoner Audley Harrison, it was sold on the premise that they were old friends turned enemies and with it came a tagline worthy of any grift: “Yes. I. Can.” That tagline was something Harrison repeated throughout the buildup to his first and only world title shot and so often was it said some actually started to believe he might have a chance of pulling off the upset. In his last fight, he had dramatically knocked out Michael Sprott in the 12th round of a European title fight he was losing and that was enough for some to believe – or want to believe – that the stars had aligned for Harrison and that his early days of struggle had not been in vain. 

In reality, of course, he had been gifted the title shot with Haye on account of Haye’s desire to have a soft defence against an opponent with some name recognition in the UK. That way Haye could have his cake and eat it. He could, on the one hand, get what most felt would be a guaranteed knockout win, and he could also flog this guaranteed knockout win to the ignorant masses on Sky Sports Box Office. Give it enough of a push, which both he and Harrison did, and a lot of money could be made from something that was, in essence, only ever one thing: a mismatch. 

On the night, when Haye ambushed his best mate in round three, both the fight’s true nature and the extent to which the public had been duped became obvious to all. It then wasn’t long before Haye and Harrison were hugging again and recalling the good old days, all the richer for having shared a ring and a vision. 

3) Tyson Fury TKO 10 Derek Chisora

December 3, 2022

London, England

No more competitive than Haye-Harrison in 2010 was the WBC heavyweight title fight between Tyson Fury and Derek Chisora in 2022. Much like Haye-Harrison, this one carried the stench of an arrangement, or a deal, with Fury and Chisora having endured a long courtship which dated back to 2011 when they first boxed. Since then, they had boxed again, in 2014, and this fight in 2022 was the last and weakest installment of a trilogy nobody really asked for or wanted to see. By now, Fury was levels above Chisora, while Chisora, who tested Fury somewhat in their first fight, was a man clearly on the decline. This not only ensured that the fight was a mismatch, which it was, but it also had you wondering how it had been allowed to happen in the first place. Was it purely because Fury wanted to financially reward Chisora at this late stage in his career? Was it less a fight than a bit of charity? Did Chisora, the charity case, ever really think he was going to win? 

If he did, there were no signs of this belief on the night. Instead, Chisora, brave as always, was gradually beaten up and broken down at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium before being finally put out of his misery after 10 rounds.

2) Tyson Fury TKO 6 Dillian Whyte

April 23, 2022

London, England

If Fury’s second all-British world heavyweight title fight with Derek Chisora was all a bit pointless, the same cannot be said for his first one: a sixth-round stoppage of Dillian Whyte at Wembley Stadium in April 2022. That fight had a lot of what Fury-Chisora III would lack – chiefly, stakes, risk, and danger. Rather than gifted his title shot, Whyte had actually worked for it, and been made to wait for it, and by the time it then arrived there were even some who felt he might have the aggression and confidence to have a bit of success in the presence of Fury. 

As it turned out, of course, this couldn’t have been further from the truth. Soon into the fight Whyte’s confidence had been knocked out of him by an on-song Fury and he had come to learn that there is a difference between beating the likes of Alexander Povetkin, Oscar Rivas and Joseph Parker and then toppling Tyson Fury. There was a gap – both in the distance between them and in class – and this gap Whyte, the smaller man, was unable to close. That’s why, in the end, he got desperate, he got reckless, and he walked on to a vicious Fury uppercut in round six. With that, Whyte’s pursuit of a world heavyweight title came to an end.  

1) Daniel Dubois TKO 5 Anthony Joshua

September 21, 2024

London, England

Although Daniel Dubois’ reign as IBF heavyweight champion was brief, the thing that puts Dubois vs. Joshua above the other all-British world heavyweight title fights in the last 25 years is the fact that it was a battle between two “world champions”. Joshua, of course, had held the same belt not once but twice and, unlike Harrison, Chisora and Whyte, challenged Dubois at Wembley Stadium with the history and mentality of a world champion. This alone made the fight between Dubois and Joshua more compelling; fraught as it was with the element of the unknown. 

Even if Joshua was likely past his best, this concern was tempered somewhat by the knowledge that Dubois was new on the scene and had yet to really prove himself or find his feet as a world heavyweight champion. They met, in other words, somewhere in the middle, right in that sweet spot, and it was hard to tell, pre-fight, which of the two Londoners would prevail. 

Then the first bell rang and Dubois suddenly seemed too big, too quick and too strong for Joshua. More than that, he seemed too confident for him, too much for him, and it was no shock when Dubois began wounding his anxious opponent with jabs and right hands, dropping him as early as round one. This pattern continued for the next few rounds before, in round five, Joshua finally had a moment of success when he staggered Dubois with a right of his own during a frantic exchange. That precipitated Joshua’s fans and team rising in hope and excitement, feeling the momentum had now shifted. It also precipitated the image of Joshua spreadeagled on the canvas having stumbled blindly into a heavy Dubois right. “Are you not entertained?!” roared the victor in the aftermath, surrounded by compatriots, with another down at his feet. “Are you not entertained?!”