Daniel Dubois to appeal Oleksandr Usyk’s controversial ‘low blow’ win
Oleksandr Usyk retained the unified heavyweight titles against Daniel Dubois on Saturday, in a hugely controversial fight in Poland.
Usyk dropped Dubois at the end of the eighth round and did the same midway through the ninth, with referee Luis Pabon waving off the bout after the second knockdown. However, many viewers felt that Dubois was denied a genuine knockout win in the fifth round.
Intention to appeal
Dubois’ promoter Frank Warren has vowed his intention to lodge an appeal and seek an immediate rematch after the controversial manner in which his fighter’s heavyweight bout against Oleksandr Usyk was lost.
Dubois managed to drop Usyk to the floor in the fifth round of the fight in Poland.
However, the shot was deemed to be a low blow by the referee, and Usyk was given nearly four minutes to recover and resume the contest.
Usyk ended up winning the fight in the ninth round due to a technical knockout and retained the WBA, IBF, WBO and IBO world titles as a result. He remains unbeaten in professional boxing, having won all 21 of his bouts.
After the fight, Dubois told BBC Sport that the opposition camp “cheated” and he is seeking “justice” following the result.
He said: “This needs to go further, it needs to be pushed.
“I should be a world champion right now. It wasn’t justice.
“It needs to be called out and go further than living this lie. They just cheated out there.”
And Dubois’s promoter Warren has elaborated even further on this and made it clear the camp will be appealing the fight’s result and seeking a rematch, believing that if the fight had continued then Dubois would have emerged victorious.
He told talkSPORT: “He won that, if he had been allowed to carry on, he would have won.
“We will appeal this. It’s a liberty.”
And speaking to TNT Sports afterwards, the promoter added: “The situation is we will be lobbying the WBA to declare this a no contest.
“The knockdown landed on the waistband of his shorts … the criteria as is explained at the rules meeting, is that the waist is the midpoint of the hips which is much lower.”
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