Moses Itauma confident Joshua can defeat Dubois

ANTHONY JOSHUA’S stablemate Moses Itauma says their training team of Ben Davison and Lee Wylie will have Saturday night’s world heavyweight encounter with Daniel Dubois ‘in a chokehold’.

Joshua challenges Dubois for the IBF title at Wembley Stadium on Saturday in the first ever Riyadh Season event on British soil.

It will be Joshua’s third fight with Davison as his head coach with the two-time heavyweight champion now the highest profile name in the Essex gym.

Davison’s facility in Harlow has become a heavyweight factory in recent years with Fabio Wardley, Jeamie TKV and the youngest of the lot Itauma all working there.

So the 19-year-old has seen at close quarters how Joshua has looked during training camp and has no doubt he is fully prepared for the 21-2 Londoner.

Itauma told Boxing News: “I don’t always speak to Joshua every day, I might just say hello and goodbye. But you can see in his demeanour that he’s definitely ready.

“On Tuesday he came up to me and said ‘what’s happening champ, you good?’ then I just said ‘are you ready?’ and he looked right at me and said ‘I’m f*****g ready’, stared at me and then walked off. I was like ‘ok, ok, he’s ready’.

“I actually thought AJ was going to knock him out but now I won’t be surprised with any outcome. The one I can’t really see is Dubois outboxing AJ and winning on points, apart from that I can see every outcome.

“I thought AJ was going to walk through him, then I clocked that Dubois has got a very good chin. Also Dubois can hit hard and although he’s not chinny, AJ has been hit, hurt, dropped, stopped before. Now I’m like ‘shit’ this is such a good fight.

“But even so, I think AJ is just too seasoned and also the Ben Davison team have got this on lock. Lee Wylie and Ben Davison do have this in a chokehold. They know what to do here.”