A split second before the bell tolled for the start of the fateful fifth round Anthony Joshua turned to trainers urging him to stay out of danger while he recovered his senses and said: ‘These are the moments we live for.’
As he rose from his stool he exclaimed: ‘I’m rolling the dice.’
This was his Charge Of The Light Brigade moment, at the thunderous climax to a week in which he had declared himself willing to die in pursuit of a place in the pantheon of three-time world heavyweight champions.
On into the line of fire he went, getting off one desperate Hail Mary before Daniel Dubois brutally cut him down for the fourth and final time.
What happens in the corner oft-times stays in the corner. Not on this Saturday night of, literally, the father of all upsets.
Anthony Joshua issued a rallying call to his corner as he embarked on that fateful fifth round
Joshua (left) was dominated by heavy-hitting Dubois (right) from the off and never recovered from his first knockdown
Joshua was knocked out in the fifth round with the British heavyweight failing to get up from the canvas
A pounding heart-beat before the first bell summoned him to arms, Dubois turned to glance at his dad, Dave. The guiding light of his career since he was five years old raised a fist signalling his boy to go for the jugular from the very beginning.
Within less than a minute Dynamite Daniel was dropping AJ with the first critical howitzer of the most explosive night of boxing the vast majority of the 96,000 souls packed into Wembley have ever seen.
That record attendance at the new stadium also bore witness to a seismic shift in the marquee division of the hardest game. The heavyweight landscape has been transformed by a 27-year-old Londoner’s declaration of intent that he is the next generation, as he authenticated inside the ropes the IBF title to which he had been elevated in an office.
So dramatic was the Dubois intervention that Tyson Fury rose from his ringside armchair groaning: ‘That’s cost me 150 million.’ The bonanza showdown between the aging Gypsy King and dear old AJ, for which the British public have been calling for light years now, hangs by a thread. It could still happen, if only in a bubble for its own sake. But if Fury loses a second time to Oleksandr Usyk come Christmas week, thereby failing to seize the other three alphabelts, that would be a very local fight.
If not for nothing then for significantly less of the Saudi Arabia millions invested in this Wembley Edition of the Riyadh Season of entertainment, which also bought the peculiar right for their national anthem to be sung as well as God Save The King on this balmy autumn evening in north-west London
In the world of sport today, nothing is beyond price. Although there can be no denying that His Excellency Turki AlalShikh has unlocked the treasure chest to the huge fights which were beyond the means of the established promoters but which have breathed much-need life into boxing.
Tyson Fury (pictured) hit out at Anthony Joshua after his IBF heavyweight loss to Daniel Dubois claiming he had cost him £150million
The bonanza showdown between the aging Gypsy King (pictured) and dear old AJ, for which the British public have been calling for light years now, hangs by a thread
Fans criticised the decision to play the Saudi Arabian national anthem at Wembley prior to the fight
But there can be no denying that His Excellency Turki AlalShikh (pictured) has unlocked the treasure chest to the huge fights
Fury (let) sat back and chatted with Joshua’s promoter Eddie Hearn (right) ahead of the fight
And to the delight of all, the fight itself surpassed the glittering show of pyrotechnics which preceded it. Not to mention drowning out the grizzly memory of Liam Gallagher’s barking attempt at three of the songs he and his brother are about to take on their Oasis reunion tour.
‘Was that entertaining for you,’ Dubois asked the electrified crowd as he raised his arms in salute to his own astonishing triumph. Indeed it was. So much so that the public may feel a tad short-changed if any of the mega-fights in the oil pipe-line do not include him in one corner.
The duel between giants advertised as today’s two biggest punchers was won by Dubois, hands down. It was over as a real contest after that first bazooka. Joshua crashed to the floor not only with his face contorted into a gargoyle but also with his eyes glazing over in shock.
The courage with which he regained his stuttering feet would be called upon time and again as Dubois connected with right-hand bombs. If the 27-year-old ever gets offered a part in a Christmas pantomime, it should be as Peter Pan’s Captain Hook.
Dubois knew this was the changing of the guard. Even in the few seconds before that initial right hook he was outperforming the fabled left jab on which Joshua had built every conquest from his Olympic gold medal to two world titles.
As AJ gasped for breath and grasped thin air his head – already in a fog – kept being snapped back by the force of the Dubois ramrod straight left. Many of which set him for a high percentage of precision power punches.
Twice more Joshua dragged himself off the canvas. Had the referee applied the letter of the law instead of over-ruling a couple of knock-downs the drop count would have been astronomical.
The duel between giants advertised as the world’s two biggest punchers was won by Dubois, hands down. It was over as a real contest after that first bazooka
Joshua was going on the hunt for a knockout of his own after rocking Dubois before being knocked out
Joshua was denied the chance to become a three-time world champion but could activate his rematch option
Yet still he braced himself for one last sortie into a boxing epithet for what Lord Tennyson poetically described as the Light Brigade’s gallop into the Valley of Death.
Legs gone but heart still beating he stumbled across the ring in the fifth to land a right of his own which stopped Dubois, his own knees momentarily buckled, in his tracks. The punishment for that was monstrous.
The greatest hook of all dropped Joshua into a foetal position on the canvas. No comeback for the ages. No way back. Not as he looked blankly up into the night sky.
The courage of both had been questioned. Joshua’s after he lost his world title for the first time when he capitulated to roly-poly Mexican-American Andy Ruiz. That of Joshua when he took a knee against Joe Joyce rather than sacrifice his career by boxing on with a shattered eye-socket at risk of being blinded.
Each of them put those slurs to bed. Dubois, In addition to responding to Joshua’s Hail Mary with the kill shot, absorbed two crunching uppercuts thrown in desperation. As well as the biggest punch on the planet this 27-year-old has a titanium jaw. The concept that he might freeze in the pressure-cooker atmosphere of the biggest night of his life, so far, was rendered laughable.
Joshua, for fighting to the crushing finish of this abbreviated but epic fight, should be given a Metropolitan Police permit to belt anyone who expresses doubt about his bravery.
As well as the biggest punch on the planet this 27-year-old (left) also has a titanium jaw
Dubois now poses a real and present danger to Oleksandr Usyk (pictured) who was also in attendance on Saturday night
Joshua now has to make a decision on whether he wants to continue boxing after the shock defeat
But therein, at 35 next month, lies the tale of his future. With his typical cheery bravura he announced that he would ‘of course’ carry on competing in ‘the sport I love.’
Team Joshua eagerly fed the narrative, focussing on their belief that the early knock-down altered not only his features but also the probable course of the fight and ultimately the outcome.
There was talk, even, of them requesting that the one remaining fight on his enriching Saudi contract be a rematch. This is at best an illusion, at worst a delusion.
Dubois is emboldened now as well as matured, his confidence sky-rocketing. He is a real and present danger to Fury and Usyk and his immediate future, given his iron grasp on the IBF title, should lie in meeting the winner of their seasonal dispute for the undisputed heavyweight championship of the world.
Joshua will not want to go out a loser. I feel for him. But there is a better, safer way to frame his thinking. This is the first seriously heavy beating he has taken. The fast hands have slowed. So has his movement. On this night, even allowing for the impact of the first head blow, he began to look older.
Joshua took a battering in front of a 96,000 sell-out crowd at Wembley on Saturday evening
And this could be the way to bow out with head high. True to his promise, if he had to suffer defeat, he would be carried out on his shield. That he was. The audience rose to him. Applause in such adverse circumstances is more priceless than cheers.
The battering he took this weekend has to be damaging both physiologically as well as psychologically. He may not be the same fighter again. If he suffers a similar fate again – especially if it is administered by Dubois – he will depart the ring with his tail between his legs. At the very least it is worth AJ and his minders considering that this may be the moment for a fundamentally good bloke and a decorated champion to bow out on a different kind of high.
When the few survivors of the Light Brigade made it back to where Earl Cadogan, who had stupidly ordered the charge, sat on his horse one of them asked him: ‘Go again, sir?’ Even that feckless aristocrat replied; ‘I think not.’
Anthony Oluwafemi Olaseni Joshua has no need to go again. Dynamite Daniel Dubois has picked up the flag. Saturday night at Wembley will long be remembered for a fantastic fight which ushered in a new era – and for the courage of gladiators at the opposite ends of their careers.