September 21, 2024. Wembley Stadium. Daniel Dubois lands a right hand that isn’t even perfectly placed.
You can’t break what cannot be broken.
That is true for many things in life of course like God’s people and God, the father of Jesus Christ and so on.
But not the case with Joshua’s chin apparently.
Ask Daniel Dubois last year, it was a brutal knockout by Dubois over Joshua.
Anthony Joshua’s legs do the stanky-leg dance, knees kiss canvas, eyes roll north. He beats the count three more times, each one slower, each one uglier. By the fifth knockdown the ref has seen enough. Joshua stays down, mouthguard dangling, staring at the lights like a man trying to remember his own name.
That wasn’t a one-off. That was the receipt for five years of accumulated mileage, Ruiz bombs, Usyk jabs, Ngannou haymakers, and finally Dubois dynamite. The granite chin that carried him through Klitschko, Povetkin, Whyte? Gone. Shattered. Replaced by something fragile that cracks the second leather finds it.
Now roll the calendar to December 19, 2025. Kaseya Center, Miami, Florida. Netflix, eight three-minute rounds, 10-ounce pillows. Across the ring stands Jake Paul, 12-1, seven knockouts, and a chin that has never once betrayed him on camera.
The Uncomfortable Truth: Joshua’s Chin Is Gone, Paul’s Is Not
Tommy Fury cracked him flush in Saudi heat: Paul smiled, nodded, kept marching. Mike Perry landed clean left hooks in Tampa: Paul ate them, laughed, then detonated his own bomb. Tyson, Silva, Diaz, Woodley; nobody has ever made Paul’s legs buckle. Not once. At 28 years old and 230 lbs, his beard is still factory-fresh, untested by the kind of wars that age a fighter overnight.
Joshua’s camp can talk “experience” and “levels” all they want. Eddie Hearn can wheel out the old “AJ’s been in with killers” line until he’s blue in the face. Facts don’t care. Joshua has now been dropped eight times in his last six fights dating back to Ruiz I. Eight. Every single one of those shots came from men who punch considerably harder than Jake Paul on paper.
Yet Paul’s right hand travels on the exact same arc Dubois used to turn Joshua’s brain to soup. Same load-up, same hip twist, same murderous intent. One clean connection in Miami and the lights go out again. The only question is whether Joshua gets up at all this time.
Paul knows it. That’s why he keeps posting the Dubois clip with the caption “Coming soon to a Netflix screen near you.” Joshua’s team knows it too. That’s why they pushed for eight rounds instead of twelve, 10-ounce gloves instead of eights, and a quick-turnaround date before the chin can magically heal.
They’re not protecting legacy. They’re protecting what’s left of a fighter who now flinches when the phone rings with another highlight reel.
The uncomfortable truth nobody in British boxing wants printed: Anthony Joshua’s chin is shot, irreparably. Jake Paul’s is pristine. December 19 isn’t a test of skill or heart. It’s a test of whether Joshua’s face can survive one moment of truth against a man who has never been hurt. History says it can’t. Reality says Paul only needs thirty clean seconds to prove it.
When the bell rings in Florida, the only thing standing between Joshua and another viral knockout meme is hope. And hope doesn’t stop right hands.
Because of all the demons in Joshua’s mind after the Dubois fight, there will, alas, be legit concerns for him when he gets hit for the first time again.
