Terri Harper believes Caroline Dubois blinked first in the psychological battle ahead of their unification fight on Sunday.
Harper and Dubois meet to unify the WBO and WBC lightweight titles, live on Sky Sports, after a week of escalating verbal sparring at London’s Olympia. The tension peaked when Harper pushed Dubois during a photoshoot.
Harper said the shove unsettled Dubois. “She panicked. She was off script. It was not what she prepared for and she didn’t know what to do,” Harper told Sky Sports.
The Doncaster fighter explained she pushed Dubois because the opponent stepped in front of her while they posed. “She’s very predictable. I knew for a fact she was going to do that because the first time she did it at the last press conference it got a good reaction. I just knew she was going to come with that,” Harper said.
“Just a little shove to remind her that I’m not here to play games, I’m not here to make up the numbers, I’m here to get them belts off her. I’m very laidback, very placid, calm but when it does come to fighting I have got that switch and people probably take my kindness for weakness. It was just a nice quick little reminder that she’s in a fight on Sunday.”
Harper also suggested Dubois has vulnerabilities in her preparation. Dubois spent several weeks sparring in the United States as part of her camp, and Harper claimed that move showed “insecurities in her camp” — saying “she’s got something that’s not working in her camp and she’s gone chasing it somewhere else.”
Dubois defended the decision to split training between the US and the UK, saying it offered a deeper pool of sparring partners and different styles. “Great rounds, sparred some guys that were out there [too], really sharp,” she told Sky Sports. “The USA style is so different. Combine that with the altitude training which I thought was really beneficial. Just a different style of training. The training out there’s so different. I was able to just pick up some things from that. The mindset, the training, the work ethic all of that, is phenomenal. I think as an athlete you have to keep trying to learn, keep trying to better your previous, keep trying to push on.”
Watch Caroline Dubois vs Terri Harper this Sunday live on Sky Sports from 7pm.