DANIEL Dubois stopped Fabio Wardley in the 11th round in Manchester to win the WBO heavyweight title, recovering from two early knockdowns to seize back a world championship on Saturday night. His father, Stan Dubois, immediately pointed the spotlight toward Moses Itauma, saying he wanted his son to fight the #1 WBO-ranked contender next.

Stan Dubois was asked after the fight whether another Oleksandr Usyk bout made sense, and he laughed off the idea. “No, I want to see him fight this giant,” he said. He was even more emphatic about the performance itself. “Brilliant. Absolutely brilliant. He showed what he was made of tonight and he delivered,” Stan Dubois said.

The victory mattered because Dubois did not just win; he recovered under fire, took punishment early and still found the finish. That kind of comeback is why the win over Wardley carried more weight than another title change on a busy boxing card. It also restored Dubois as a heavyweight world champion at a time when the division is looking for its next major domestic showdown.

The path forward may already be taking shape. WBO president Gustavo Olivieri had identified Itauma as the mandatory challenger after Dubois beat Wardley, and Stan Dubois made clear he would rather see that fight than a return against Usyk. Itauma, viewed as one of boxing’s fastest-rising young heavyweights, would bring youth, momentum and serious risk to a champion who had just been down twice before turning the fight around.

Stan Dubois also took issue with the timing of the stoppage when asked whether the referee should have stepped in earlier. “I thought so, but they were hoping that he would come back from the dead, weren’t they?” he said. The remark captured the night in one line: Dubois had already done the hard part, and now the toughest question is whether the next step is a British all-title clash that could tell the rest of the heavyweight story very quickly.