Daniel Dubois delivered when he had to.
The Londoner stopped fellow heavyweight contender Jarrell Miller in the final seconds of a 10-round bout he had dominated on a card featuring Deontay Wilder and Anthony Joshua on Saturday in Saudi Arabia.
Dubois (20-2, 18 KOs) used stick-and-move tactics and timely toe-to-toe exchanges to outwork Miller (26-1-1, 22 KOs), who outweighed the winner by 94 pounds.
Dubois got off to a strong start, jabbing, moving and beating the slower Miller to the punch over the first three rounds. Miller came on in the fourth and fifth rounds, when he landed many of his best punches of the fight.
However, Dubois reclaimed the momentum after that and never gave it up. He landed power punches almost at will in the second half of the fight, when the 333-pound Miller grew weary.
It appeared that Dubois was destined to win a decision but a series of answered power punches forced the referee to stop the fight with only eight seconds remaining.
Dubois was coming off a ninth-round knockout loss to unified titleholder Oleksandr Usyk in August, after which many questioned his fighting spirit.
He proved his doubters wrong by making a strong statement against a capable, much bigger man, never looking better than he did on Saturday. He is now back in legitimate title contention.
Miller was in the midst of a comeback after failed drug tests derailed the New Yorker’s career.
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