By Ron Jackson
South Africa has an illustrious history in heavyweight boxing with Gerrie Coetzee (WBA), Fransie Botha (IBF) and Corrie Sanders (WBO) winning versions of the heavyweight title.
In the main supporting bout for Fury versus Chisora, South Africa’s top heavyweight contender, the 30-year-old Kevin Lerena (28-1, 14 KOs) who has won his six fights in the premier division in style, and is listed at #12 by the World Boxing Association, challenges 25-year-old Daniel Dubois (18-1, 17 KOs) from Greenwich, England, for the WBA regular heavyweight title.
Dubois won the WBA belt on June 11 2022 with a fourth-round knockout win against Trevor Bryan (22-0). The only loss on Dubois’ record came against Joe Joyce who stopped him in the tenth round after he suffered a fractured eye socket. However, before the stoppage, his face was already marked up.
Since the loss to Joyce, Dubois has scored wins over Bogdan Dinu (KO2), Joe Cusumano (TKO1) and the win over Bryan, possibly no world-beaters.
Dubois is the bigger man with a height of 6’5 and a reach of 78″ against Lerena’s height of 6’1 and reach of 74″.
Most of the British critics are predicting an easy win for Dubois, but they possibly haven’t taken into account that Dubois could be troubled by the southpaw stance of Lerena – and in the history of the heavyweight division it is not always the big man who wins.
There is no doubt that Lerena will be in 100% condition and could surprise his more fancied opponent.
Looking through the history of world heavyweight boxing, there have been a number of so-called small heavyweights who have won world titles including the current unified ruler Oleksandr Usyk.
Dubois can fight some. He was beating Joyce until the eye deal.
Joyce was well up on one scorecard and du Bois nicely up on another while the third scorecard had du Bois up 1 point entering 10th. It was a fairly even fight according to the scorecards!
Well, even if he wins, he won’t be heavyweight champion. What a joke!
This should actually be for the vacant Commonwealth H/W championship, as the WBA ordanary/regular title means zilch!!….
Lerena won’t be SA’s 4th heavyweight champion. But he will be able to say he tried and gave it his best shot and always did so by being in the best shape and as well prepared as he possibly could.
He can say that but prob not true. There has prob never been an experienced fighter to believe they were always in the best shape and well prepared as possible.
There is always another gear.
Out of all the questions you still have about Dubois, none of them are about his power. It’ll be interesting to see what happens the first time he catches Lerena.
As a South African I will be watching and hoping somehow Lerena is just the wrong style for Dubois and manages to upset all the odds.
this fight might be better than the main event
Daniel is a clear favourite but I get the sense Lerena is ‘up’ for this fight and expecting a big effort from him.
South African? Lol
Dubois is very scary but was just not experianced at handling a power jab from an immovable giant like Joyce. Dubious rematch with Joyce after he dusts off the brave Lerena
Lerena too small and has a loss early on he should have won. Would assume Dubois will blast him out
could be interesting.
Some real stretching of the term ‘world champion’ here…
Botha wasn’t officially a world champ. His title ‘win’ over Axel Schulz was changed to a No Contest due to PED’s and his reign was therefore invalid.
And Dubois-Lerena is hardly a real world title contest any more than a WBU or WBF title bout is.
Didn’t Botha get stripped of the IBF belt that he won against Axel Schulz because of steroids?