There’s always a distinct charge before any fight, but it’s different with heavyweights, especially these heavyweights. Anthony Joshua and Daniel Dubois are both big hitters, both woundable, beatable. The expectation is that, probably quite soon, one of the men currently giving each other unbroken eye contact in the ring will be unconscious. There’s an appetite for it tonight, with the lights on and Wembley Stadium’s arch above us, the songs sung, the fireworks and sparklers and LED wrist-lights dwindled to a solitary point of focus. We’re three hours and five bouts in, and all of it has been leading up to Joshua vs Dubois. At this point of the night we just want harm done on our behalf.

Dubois made his entrance to the sound of drums, walking behind masked performers spinning flaming circles, in a Mike Tyson-inspired black poncho, black shorts, black boots. If he didn’t quite manage to glower, he at least looked focused, as his entrance song, ‘Lucifer Son of the Morning’, a dubby reggae number, drew muted boos. Then came Joshua, all in white, as ‘Oh Anthony Joshua’ filled the stadium, chanted to the tune of ‘Seven Nation Army’. Such is Joshua’s star power, his seat-filling charisma, that Dubois – despite holding the title of ‘world champion’ – agreed to walk to the ring first tonight, usually the role of the challenger. As he walked, the sense of anticipation grew – if not bloodlust, then an outsourced potency, a collective will, for this strolling giant to get in there and do some damage for us. Now, Joshua gives his opponent an unblinking glare as he readies himself for – he hopes – restitution.

Anthony Joshua has been filling stadiums for nearly a decade. He rose to prominence as one of the poster boys of the London 2012 Olympic Games, winning Super Heavyweight gold at just twenty-two years old. From the beginning, he was an advertiser’s dream – enormous, aggressively handsome, with a physique that suggested tectonic plates. He had enough backstory to make him seem gritty – a bit of drug dealing, trouble with the police, boxing as the straight path towards his new-found love of a motivational truism – but not so much to be off-putting or divisive. He’d only started boxing at eighteen, the age many boxers consider going pro. Within five years he’d beaten the best of his fellow amateurs and won that London gold – an extraordinarily rapid rise, testament to his ability to absorb and act on instruction, as well as his natural athleticism, determination and explosive punching power.

Joshua might have had a reputation as a star boy, but there were always doubters who pointed to his late start, suggesting it might prove his undoing as he ascended the ranks. He never had the amateur schooling most of his peers enjoyed – the junior years, in gloves too big for the growing frame; those long months in cold gyms, transmuting repetitive drills into muscle memory. His early style relied, instead, on ferocity: fast hands, brutalising combinations of punches which blasted his early opponents out, delivering the coup de grâce, usually, with his preternaturally concussive right hand. His rudimentary grasp of the essentials didn’t matter when he could hit that hard, that often. The purists could complain that his movements were a little robotic, or that his footwork was wrong, after they woke up.

Over the years, however, Joshua’s star power has threatened to outstrip his skill in the ring; fans connected immediately with the man’s story, his persona, his humbly arresting feats. He has never been a skulking, threatening sort of fighter; he doesn’t go in for trash talk or baby-threatening, so much as old-fashioned respect, fair play, parliamentary procedure. In his early twenties, he was still living with his mother, in Watford, and you got the sense that while he would knock people out, he’d feel bad afterwards. After his gold medal, lots were cast for everything that went on or into his hulking frame, with clothing brands, headphones, sports drinks and other conglomerates ensuring his leaving the house required rigorous planning. He turned professional with an expectation that he’d stroll through his first dozen fights. And that’s largely what happened – but not just because of Joshua. It happened because of the team around him, which matchmade and built Joshua into an unmissable attraction, handpicking opponents to highlight his best aspects, and keep any flaws well hidden.

Matchmaking is one of the most important tasks for the team behind a fighter – it’s a dark art, picking the right tests. There’s no fixture list in boxing, and few demands are ever made at an organisational level that can’t be negotiated around. Joshua’s potential – as a fighter, but also as a brand, a commodity, was apparent already in his Olympic days. The last thing the brains behind his operation wanted was to risk pushing him into deep waters too soon, before he’d learned more of the tricks of the trade, or developed an ability to navigate the longer duration of professional fights, to compete in contests where the aim wasn’t to score points but to end the night as early as possible. ‘You don’t get paid overtime in boxing’ is a familiar, pragmatic, adage.

His promoter, Eddie Hearn, and the wider team behind him, had one chief goal: to make him, and themselves, as much money as possible while taking as few risks as they could get away with, at least until he had made it to the top of the mountain. His education was important, but far more important was gilding his box-office appeal, preserving his unbeaten record, and maximising his ability to wow fans in highlight reels of him putting tall men on their backs, out for the count.

Those hoped-for knockouts came, but with them went the chances of Joshua amassing big-fight experience, or gauging the limits of his stamina. Instead, Joshua’s early professional career followed the age-old pattern of any bankable prospect, especially in the heavyweight division, where one clean shot can ruin everything. In the tried and tested manner of any hot up-and-comer, he was fed baggy men in kit from the lost and found, served up to fall down. And if he mostly struggled to get out of first or second gear, the men who might be able to challenge him to do so, to raise his game, were kept away, too risky a proposition while he was finding his feet as a pro.