Fury vs Joshua Could Make or Break Ben Davison

I hope trainer Ben Davison is avoiding social media at the moment, for the sake of his mental health. He's being absolutely shredded following the knockout loss of Fabio Wardley by Daniel Dubois on Saturday. 

That shattering defeat was just the latest in a series that saw his high-profile heavyweight charges, Anthony Joshua, Moses Itauma and Wardley, in his first fight with Dubois, all get stopped.

One person that refuses to blame Davison is Fabio Wardley himself, who was filmed mouthing the words "my fault" over and over following his second round defeat. Fabio is an affable guy, but if you want to make him angry, just try suggesting that Ben is a bad trainer. 

Ben has had to endure some cruel nicknames, the worst being "Boxercise Ben". This is because he first became known to boxing fans when he was brought in primarily to help Tyson Fury lose weight before his first fight with Deontay Wilder.

The critics say that he focuses on conditioning at the expense of old school training methods, such as sparring and bag work, that prepare a fighter for twelve hard rounds.

They also say that he encourages his boxers to keep their lead hand down, leaving their chins exposed, and that he gives them terrible advice that causes them to walk on to fight-ending shots.

Famously, he told Anthony Joshua to "roll the dice" against Daniel Dubois. A few seconds later, AJ was lying in a heap by the ropes, having been drilled by a right hand as he was winding up an uppercut. Wardley made a similar mistake on Saturday.

But is all this criticism fair? Well telling a hurt and tired boxer to "roll the dice" is probably not the wisest thing to say, because it seems to advocate recklessness. Tactical advice should not sound like a "do or die" gamble. 

But the technical instruction he gave to AJ was not as bad as people make out. Joshua made the fatal mistake of throwing a lead right uppercut against Dubois. Davison had told him to double the jab first. He had observed that Daniel would duck after the double jab, because he was anticipating the straight right. So throwing an uppercut as he dipped made good sense.

AJ did not do as Ben Davison asked. Similarly, Moses Itauma in his loss to Filip Hrgovic ignored Ben's pleas to calm things down.

But if the advice was sound, does Ben have a different problem? Is he unable to make some of his fighters listen when the going gets tough?

One of the issues might be the kind of language he uses. He told a tiring Moses that "less is more". That sounds like a cool line, but perhaps he needed to be less cryptic and simply tell him to take the round off. Some of his instructions seem overly complex.

Contrast Ben's advice to the simple words uttered by veteran Abel Sanchez in the opposite corner that night. Sometimes, simplicity is the key. Ben is a clever man, but sounding clever can be counterproductive.

He also needs to make sure that his boxers aren't receiving conflicting advice in the corner. When Ben was telling Moses to calm down, assistant trainer Lee Wiley was talking about stopping Hrgovic with body shots. 

Ben is the head trainer and he needs to make sure that everyone follows his lead. 

But I believe that Ben has come in for a lot of stick for problems that were not of his making. Moses did not have the experience to cope with a long fight against an elite giant like Hrgovic, Fabio lacked the grounding to be able to implement parts of his gameplan, and AJ has serious confidence issues.

Davison is a good trainer and at 34, he is still very young. But he desperately needs some luck. Will he finally get some at the "Battle of Britain" in December?