Returning Johnny Fisher has been inspired to unlock a new level of training intensity by his gym-mate Daniel Dubois.

Fisher (13-1, 11 KOs) will hit the comeback trail in Monte Carlo on Saturday night in what will be his first outing since he was knocked out by Dave Allen in their rematch at London’s Copper Box Arena in May.

Since that defeat, Fisher has amicably split with long-time trainer Mark Tibbs and headed across Essex to join Tony Sims at his Matchroom Gym.

But he was not the only British heavyweight to link up with Sims this year after Dubois decided to make the move in the wake of his crushing defeat to Oleksandr Usyk at Wembley Stadium in July.

Now Fisher has told The Ring that training alongside Dubois has taught him a lesson in intensity.

“It’s amazing to be in the same gym as him,” Fisher says.

“I trained with him before very briefly four or five years ago when he was with Mark Tibbs for a couple of months.

“Now I’ve got to see just how intense he is with his training. For me, as a youngish heavyweight still coming through a few levels below him it’s good to have someone of that ilk in front of me to learn from.

“The intensity of his training is just at a different level. When I first started as a pro I loved to train really hard and, don’t get me wrong, I’ve always done that but I feel like I lost a step. Now I’m getting that frame of mind back and it’s from being around people like Daniel.

“When you’re in the gym with him, you have to train like a beast. This camp has been all about hard work and that's probably what I was missing a little bit through no one's fault.”

Fisher has sparred Dubois in the past but their training schedules did not link up this time - and Fisher was not complaining.

He added: “We had been scheduled for a couple of spars but he had some media work and it didn’t happen.

“But to be honest with you I don't need more than one or two spars with Daniel because whenever I've sparred him before, he punches extremely hard. He's probably the most diligent and the most ferocious sparring partner I've ever had in my life.

“Once he's in there, he's in there to do the job. He's in there to do damage. Every time I've sparred him and I've seen him spar other people, he tries to knock you out.

“It might be slightly different now we’re stable mates but whenever I've seen it, he spars at the intensity he's going to fight and I think that probably does make sense.”

Now with his first camp under Tibbs complete, it is down to Fisher to put what he has been working on into practice at Salle des Etoiles, live on DAZN. He had been scheduled to fight Herbert Matovu but a visa issue meant undefeated Slovakian Ivan Balaz (7-0, 5 KOs) has stepped in at short notice.

For the first time, Fisher is approaching a fight off the back of a defeat and he admits that brings with it a new pressure.

“A new pressure in the sense that you now need to show that you're still in the game,” Fisher said. “It’s up to me to show I’m still a threat.

“I think the pressure had built and it came from the feeling that that I’d fight Alen Babic then Dave Allen twice and I’d probably be the favourite. But that was probably just an illusion because I beat Alen in 30 seconds.

“After that everyone thinks you’re a top prospect and a contender on the world scene but really I wasn’t and I never was. I wasn’t ready for that. I was being linked with people like Hughie Fury because that would have been the next step.

“But my dad was saying to me ‘you’re not ready for people like that, Johnny’ but you've got to ride the wave that you’re on.

“Now I’m on a different wave and I need to prove to people that I'm not just someone who's had a run and they've fallen off.”