IN LIFE you have to give credit where it’s due, and just as it was due to Eddie Hearn and Sky Sports Boxing for the Fight Camp series they successfully pulled off back in August in the extensive grounds of Matchroom Sports HQ in rural Essex, it’s also now due to rival promoter Frank Warren and his broadcasting partner BT Sport for ensuring that we can look forward to a feast of heavyweight boxing as this annus horribilis, turned upside down by a virus, winds down to a its welcome end.

The announcement that the eagerly anticipated domestic heavyweight clash between Daniel Dubois and Joe Joyce will finally take place behind closed doors on 28 November is further enhanced by Warren’s pledge to organise a domestic PPV card headlined by Tyson Fury around Christmas time — this to be presented as a homecoming fight for the current WBC, Ring Magazine and self-styled lineal heavyweight champion, who by then will have been out of the ring for over a year. 

Dubois v Joyce is a classic youth versus experience match up, and a fight that comes with the guarantee of fireworks. On the line will be the vacant WBU European title along with Dubois’s Commonwealth title in a fight that will be his sternest test yet, as in Joe Joyce you have yourself something approximating to a freak in human form.