Daniel Dubois delivered the type of emphatic knockout September 21 that Frank Warren and other British boxing experts expected when the hulking heavyweight turned pro seven years ago.

The London native withstood a lot of adversity – namely two knockout defeats to England’s Joe Joyce and Ukraine’s Oleksandr Usyk – before he provided the type of unforgettable finish fans in the UK anticipated when he began building his resume on Warren’s Queensberry Promotions cards prior to his 10th-round knockout loss to Joyce in November 2020 in London.

Dubois undoubtedly took a circuitous route to that career-changing moment, but it came against the opponent he wanted most – former unified heavyweight champion Anthony Joshua.

The 6-foot-5, 252-pound Dubois (22-2, 21 KOs) violently knocked out Joshua (28-4, 25 KOs) in the fifth round of their fight for Dubois’ IBF belt 3½ months ago at a sold-out Wembley Stadium in London. Dubois dropped Joshua once apiece in the first, third, fourth and fifth rounds before referee Marcus McDonnell had no choice but to stop their scheduled 12-rounder 59 seconds into the fifth round.

That final knockdown produced The Ring’s “Knockout of the Year” for 2024. Dubois, 27, was among 10 honorees Saturday night at The Ring’s inaugural awards gala at Old Royal Naval College in London.

That impressive victory moved Dubois into a 12-round fight against another former champion, New Zealand’s Joseph Parker (35-3, 23 KOs), on the Artur Beterbiev-Dmitry Bivol undercard February 22 at Kingdom Arena.