Trevor Bryan Looks Forward to Building His British Fan Base

Trevor Bryan is undefeated and owns a share of the fractured WBA world heavyweight title. He’s also a relative unknown. Even hardcore fans are uncertain of what to make of him.

Bryan (22-0, 15 KOs) has a chance to become famous overnight, in a matter of speaking, if he can drub Daniel Dubois when they meet on June 11 at Casino Miami Jai-Alai in Miami, Florida. It will be Bryan’s first test against an opponent favored to beat him.

Dubois, a Londoner of West Indian descent, was a beast coming out of the amateur ranks. He won his first 15 pro fights, 14 by knockout. The cagy American veteran Kevin Johnson was the only man to go the distance with him and Dubois won all 10 rounds.

“What most judges agree upon,” said Jeff Powell, writing in September of 2020, “is that this obsessively dedicated south Londoner with the sledgehammer fists is a world champion in the making.” Powell, the dean of British boxing writers, praised Dubois for his “lethal punching power reinforced by a concrete chin,” but tempered his enthusiasm by noting that Dubois still lacked the experience that every young fighter needs. At this point, he had answered the bell for only 43 rounds.

Two months after Powell’s story appeared in the Daily Mirror, Dubois had his bubble burst by countryman Joe Joyce who fed him a steady diet of hard  jabs en route to a 10^th-round stoppage.

Dubois quit after his left eye closed completely, compromising his vision. At the hospital, he was diagnosed with a fractured orbital bone. Since then, he has added two more wins to his ledger, fast knockouts over unheralded opponents, enhancing his record to 17-1 (16). Against Trevor Bryan, he will have youth on his side. At age 24, Dubois is the younger man by almost eight years.

Bryan, born and raised in Albany, New York, also has West Indian roots. His parents are from Jamaica; his father from St. Thomas and his mother from Montego Bay. His father is a janitor at an Albany hospital and also owns a Caribbean market.

Bryan played all sports as a boy but gravitated toward football where he was an all-league defensive lineman at Bishop Maginn High School. With his physique, he certainly wasn’t going to be a shortstop or a point guard or a cornerback.

“All my life I’ve heard people telling me I’m overweight,” says Bryan, “but I’m just a big boy.” He guesses that he already weighed about 230 pounds when he was 14 years old. But the weight never hurt his stamina.

Bryan, whose primary residence is now in the Fort Lauderdale area where he lives with his partner and their two young daughters, was discovered by Don King scout Tracey McKinley by accident. McKinley went to Bryan’s amateur boxing club in Schenectady, New York, to check out a somewhat more highly-touted heavyweight prospect, Kimbo Bethel. After watching Bethel and Bryan go through their paces, McKinley said, “I like the other guy better.”

A call to USA Boxing coach Al Mitchell, who ran a camp for elite amateurs at Northern Michigan University, confirmed McKinley’s instinct. Mitchell and Bryan had had a falling-out, but that did not cloud Mitchell’s judgment that Trevor Bryan was worth the gamble. McKinley signed him for Don King while taking on the roles of co-manager and head trainer. (For the record, Bryan’s amateur stablemate Kimbo Bethel, inactive since 2018, went on to compile a pro record of 11-2-1 with nine KOs.)

Since out-pointing capable journeyman Derric Rossy in 2015 at an outdoor show in Las Vegas on a typically sweltering August night, Bryan has fought only six times, missing all of 2019 and 2020. The reasons vary, but not the repercussion: out of sight, out of mind. “{Trevor Bryan} isn’t a household name,” said Daniel Dubois’s promoter Frank Warren in one of the great understatements of all time.

Bryan intends to change all that on June 11. “I am going to beat Dubois and take all of his fans with me,” he says. The match will air in the U.K. on BT Sport.

Bryan is brimming with confidence. “I call Daniel Dubois a gatekeeper frontrunner,” he says. “You all know what a frontrunner is, a guy looks great when the going is good and then folds up when he runs into adversity.”

If he beats Daniel Dubois, Bryan becomes the WBA’s mandatory opponent for Oleksandr Usyk pending Usyk’s rematch with Anthony Joshua. “I will fight the winner of that fight,” he says, “and I could care less who it is.”

Despite two losses, Anthony Joshua remains a superstar in Great Britain, the cradle of pugilism, where top-tier boxers are far more celebrated than in the U.S. If, perchance, a bout between Joshua and Trevor Bryan were to reach the negotiation stage, would Bryan be willing to fight Joshua in England?

“That’s where I would want the fight to be,” he says. “I need to build up my fan base in Britain.”

To comment on this story in the Fight Forum CLICK HERE