Daniel Dubois pulled off the surprise of the century, landing enough right hooks to knock out a whale, let alone knock out Anthony Joshua, and taking the heavyweight world into the next generation in spectacular fashion.

The 27-year-old Londoner not only retained his IBF title but also shattered the myth that Joshua, at nearly 35, could still become a three-time world heavyweight champion.

For Britain’s Olympic gold medalist and longtime master of the British ring, retirement seemed more likely than joining that elite company. For Dubois—after one of the greatest nights Wembley or any arena has ever seen—the world was his oyster.

For starters, he ate Joshua alive here. Four knockouts in less than five rounds was only the half of it. From the start, in the form of a powerful right to knock out his first opponent, Joshua was staggering and charging through a fog of despair.

If the referee had played by the rules, he would have counted at least eight times in each round. Between the two giants billed as the hardest punchers in boxing today, Dubois was a cannon against a pistol.

What will hurt Joshua the most—even more than not being able to take the IBF belt from the young champion—is that his legendary left punch was defeated. Just brushed aside.

AJ was left with nothing but admiration for being able to get up after such head-scratching blows.

Nor did he believe that before the finishing shot in the fifth round, he summoned a Hail Mary of his own that stopped Dubois in his tracks on his way to glory. If only for a moment before he fell asleep like a child curled up on the ring.

The future of heavyweight boxing has been rewritten, the money invested in Saudi Arabia’s most troubled sport has been redirected.

Whether the long-awaited — too long, if we’re being honest — fight between Joshua and Tyson Fury will ever happen remains to be seen.

There’s a new ruler in the ring, and a multi-hundred-million-dollar fight without him in one corner doesn’t seem like an appealing prospect.

Even the most spectacular pre-fight show ever made, with all the fireworks, couldn’t top Dynamite Daniel.

The stadium slowly filled as the 96,000 ticket holders cautiously made their way to the sold-out seats.

A new record, the promoters claimed. Well, at least in the new Wembley. Not in the old one with the Twin Towers. On an April afternoon in 1923, in the first football match played at the original Wembley, Bolton Wanderers won the FA Cup by beating West Ham United 2-0 in what became known as the White Horse Final.

The match was so named because a police horse named Billy had kicked the ball off by pushing tens of thousands of fans out of the pitch to within a metre of the touchline.

The official crowd was 126,407 for the match, including King George V, who was among the few seated. Unofficial estimates of the standing crowd range from 300,000 to 330,000.

The only royal present to watch Joshua and Dubois fight was the Gypsy King.

There was a roar of welcome as Tyson Fury took his seat, in a ringside armchair next to Oleksandr Usyk, the man he will face in a rematch for the remaining heavyweight title in Riyadh on Christmas week.

Win that fight, or lose a second time to the Ukrainian war mascot, Fury watched in the hope that his next appearance at Wembley would be in another British blockbuster, the long-awaited showdown with Joshua. Although Saudi Arabia is in the planning stages for an even grander stadium in the desert.

Either way, there are still millions more to be made by the giants of the ring. As long as they keep delivering the Sheikh, Rattle and Roll thrillers.

This time it is Joshua and Dubois who will make the Saudi money-payers hold their breath.

In the big boxing world, AJ and DDD were seen by their promoters as hard-hitting fighters who would go all out for the IBF title. As a result, the Riyadh Season would continue.

Dubois and Joshua played their part in this, engaging in an angry brawl during a TV promo, after which each threatened to knock the other out.

Otherwise, Joshua, accustomed to such big events, was a calm cat during fight week. Relaxed, smiling, and eloquent. As the big night drew closer, Dubois became increasingly tense.

He pounded the table when he objected to a question, answering others with short one-, two-, or three-word answers.

The atmosphere is tense on nights like this. The volume is turned up as a group of celebrities are cheered to the roof as they appear on the big screen. A-listers and Z-listers alike.

Liam Gallagher has pumped up the atmosphere with a performance of some of the hits from the Oasis reunion tour.

The fighters arrive, eardrums more severely ruptured. The joints are in full swing this autumn as Dubois and Joshua enter a bear pit through rings of fire and under fireworks that explode in the night sky above the stadium.

The original challenger enters the ring to the tune of The Godfather — befitting his high-profile status in this melee — with Dubois accompanied by his trainer Don Charles, who was reportedly fired earlier in the week.

The national anthem of Saudi Arabia, which sponsored the lavish north London affair, and God Save The King were sung with varying degrees of emotion before Michael Buffer declared them Ready to Rumble.

After the spectacle, there was a lot to look forward to in this match. Thankfully, it delivered.