Frank Warren Plans To Appeal Daniel Dubois’ Loss To Oleksandr Usyk Due To Controversial Low Blow

Frank Warren is planning to appeal Saturday night’s fight between Daniel Dubois and Oleksandr Usyk.

Dubois was looking to become WBA, WBO, IBO, IBF, and The Ring heavyweight champion when he took on Usyk. Entering the fight, he was a sizeable betting underdog, but in the fifth round, Dubois landed a body shot that dropped Usyk.

However, the ref ruled the punch was low, but on replay, it did appear to land cleanly. Usyk took over three minutes to recover and went on to win by ninth-round stoppage.

However, given that many believe the body shot landed cleanly, Frank Warren plans to appeal the result as he hopes it will be a No Contest at worst.

“Cheated out of victory. It hit him on the waistband,” said Frank Warren… “That’s all he worked on in camp. Working to the body. We see that as a weakness and he got caught, and that referee got it badly wrong. Badly wrong. Didn’t take any points off him. If there’s a low blow, why didn’t you take points off him? And I like Usyk, I like him, but that was a hometown decision. Compete hometown decision. He won that fight because he was not fit to go on and they gave him, I don’t know how long it was, a couple of minutes to recover from a legitimate shot.”

With Frank Warren believing it was a clean shot, he says the fight would have been over as Oleksandr Usyk had minutes to recover, not 10 seconds.

With that, Warren believes Daniel Dubois should be the heavyweight champ and plans to rightfully appeal the result.

“This is a boxing match and it should be straight and it should be above board, and it was not above board,” Warren said. “That was not a low blow. And how long did he get to recover? A couple of minutes? It’s nonsense. It’s total nonsense. The governing bodies are going to have to do something about it and they’ll order a rematch, because how can you not order a rematch on the strength of that? He won it.

“[We’re going to] appeal what’s going on here and then see we’ll see where it goes from there,” Warren continued, “but I’m quite sure they’ll order another rematch, order another fight. They have to. Justice has to be done.”

Whether or not Warren and Dubois will win the appeal is to be seen, but both are frustrated with the outcome.

Do you think Daniel Dubois’ body shot was clean?