With 2026 underway, the heavyweight division has already dominated the early headlines, with a host of contenders manoeuvring for position in an increasingly crowded title picture. In one of the most intriguing narratives, Daniel Dubois looks to win back his world heavyweight title.<\/p>\n
Oleksandr Usyk\u2019s next championship defence is close to being announced, Tyson Fury has confirmed his comeback after a year-long retirement and Anthony Joshua is back in training following a serious car crash that tragically claimed the lives of two of his friends. Elsewhere, Agit Kabayel marked a successful homecoming with victory over Damian Knyba, while Fabio Wardley\u2019s first defence of his WBO title could come against Derek Chisora in what would be the veteran\u2019s 50th professional bout.<\/p>\n
But questions remain over the immediate future of former IBF heavyweight champion Dubois.<\/p>\n
The 28-year-old has recently teamed up with Tony Sims after opting not to retain Don Charles and is looking to rebuild following his unsuccessful bid for undisputed honours against Usyk at Wembley Stadium last summer.<\/a> Despite being ranked inside the top five by two of the four major sanctioning bodies, there has so far been little clarity on when \u2014 or against whom \u2014 Dubois will return.<\/p>\n His promoter Frank Warren, however, has a clear idea of the direction he would like to see \u2018Dynamite\u2019 take. Speaking to Queensberry\u2019s Dev Sahni<\/a> on Friday, Warren outlined a potential blockbuster.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019d like to see him in with \u2018Big Bang\u2019 [Zhilei Zhang]. I think it\u2019s a great fight. I\u2019d like to see that. That\u2019d be a big, fantastic fight. Two big punchers \u2014 that\u2019s what you want. Big guys who throw bombs at each other. That\u2019s what people are buying into with heavyweights. Exciting fights. Whether it goes the distance or not, it\u2019ll be exciting.\u201d<\/p>\n While Dubois has already experienced life as a world champion, Zhang is still chasing that milestone. The 42-year-old Chinese heavyweight has consistently faced elite opposition, but his recent record stands at three wins and three defeats against Filip Hrgovic, Joe Joyce<\/a>, Joseph Parker, Deontay Wilder and Agit Kabayel.<\/p>\n A victory over Dubois would represent a significant career boost for Zhang \u2014 and an equally valuable statement for the Brit \u2014 as both look to force their way back into a title conversation currently led by Usyk and Wardley.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"With 2026 underway, the heavyweight division has already dominated the early headlines, with a host of contenders manoeuvring…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":373851,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[41],"tags":[2560,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-373850","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-boxing","tag-boxing","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/373850","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=373850"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/373850\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/373851"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=373850"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=373850"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=373850"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}