Whyte, Frampton And Others Don’t Think So
As fight fans know, Daniel Dubois, one of the hottest, most promising young heavyweights on the planet prior to last night’s crunch fight with Joe Joyce, suffered a nasty eye injury in the battle of unbeaten Brits, and he was counted out after he took a knee in the tenth round. Dubois said after the loss how he simply “couldn’t see.” And one look at Dubois’ left eye let you know how hammered shut, how tight as a ball the eye really was.
It must be a frightening thing for any fighter, especially a young and somewhat inexperienced fighter, to be half blinded in a fight, his opponent still fresh, still strong and still looking to lay him out. With all that said, are the claims of Dubois being “a quitter,” or even worse, “a coward,” far too harsh? Carl Frampton said on air whilst doing punditry duties for BT Sport: “I think he quit, I have to be brutally honest.”
While Dillian Whyte – who was once being called out by Dubois – took to social media to really put the boot in, writing: “Man’s out there quitting in mid-fight. They were saying they wanna fight me and they gonna knock me out. One thing with me, no quit, straight warrior. If I’m losing, I’m getting knocked out. Straight warrior, straight warrior. And these cowards wanna mention [me].”
Dubois, who was taken to the hospital due to the severity of his eye, was ahead on two of the three official cards at the time of his decision/no choice but to take a knee (by a whopping eight point margin on one card, this a real disgrace), so who knows, maybe he should have sucked it up and battled through the remainder of the tenth round and then fought to the final bell. But who can say? Only when a fighter is in the frightening and painful position Dubois was in can he truly know what its like.
Maybe, if Dubois had fought on until the end of the 12th round, his eye would have been permanently injured (heaven forbid, but this could be the case as it is; we must wait and see whether or not Dubois has suffered any retinal damage), with his career in danger of being ended as a result. Dubois is young enough to come again and, assuming his eye does make a full recovery, look for him to do so.
One loss does not end a career. Nor does one loss make a fighter a quitter.
