Anthony Joshua stops Leo; Quigg-Salinas ends in draw

By Boxing News - 10/05/2013 - Comments

joshua656By Scott Gilfoid: Former 2012 super heavyweight British Olympic gold medalist defeated Italy’s Emanuele Leo (8-1, 3 KO’s) by a 1st round TKO tonight at the O2 Arena in London, United Kingdom. Throwing mainly arm punches, Joshua caught Leo by the ropes and flurried on him until he dropped. The fight was then stopped by the referee.

The 6’6″ Joshua looked huge and really muscular, but his power wasn’t impressive at all. I didn’t see any new power from when he was fighting in the amateur ranks, and Leo looked to be about as good a puncher as Joshua. The difference of course was that Leo wasn’t putting his punches together and his defensive lax. He let Joshua catch him with some shots and flurry on him until the stoppage.

I have a lot of doubts about Joshua going anywhere in the heavyweight division after watching this performance. Joshua doesn’t look as powerful as even guys like Hughie Fury, and he’d definitely slower than Hughie. I would recommend that Joshua go on a weight problem, but he’s already over-muscular as it is. Perhaps if Joshua loses some of that useless muscle on his upper body then he might develop some power, but right now Joshua doesn’t punch as hard as domestic guys like Dereck Chisora, David Price, Hughie Fury and Tyson Fury. Those guys are better punchers, and the thing is none of them are huge punches.

Leo was tagging Joshua with shots and it was pretty even until Joshua started flurrying with his punches. Any heavyweight could have done what Joshua did, but it shouldn’t have taken Joshua to flurry on the guy if he had any power. It’s really strange because Joshua is really muscular but the power just isn’t there.

It’s hard to understand what’s going on with Joshua, because he looks like he could punch a hole through fighters like Leo, but when he throws punches the power isn’t like a big puncher at all. I’ve seen muscle bound fighters before that have no power, and Joshua looks like one of them.

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WBA super bantamweight champion Scott Quigg (26-0-2, 19 KO’s) retained his 122 lb. strap with a 12 round majority draw draw against challenger Yoandris Salinas (20-0-2, 13 KO’s) by the scores of 114-114, 115-113 and 114-114. I agree with the score. Quigg failed to establish that he was the better fighter because he kept getting drilled with head shots from the skillful Salinas. He made Quigg look bad at times, especially in the first 6 rounds. Quigg only has himself to blame for the draw because he fought like he was scared of Salinas for the first 6 rounds, and it was only in the second half of the fight that Quigg came on to control the rest of the fight.

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Other boxing action on the card

Tony Conquest UD 10 Wadi Camacho
Lee Selby UD 12 Ryan Walsh
Tony Owen pts 10 Danny Connor
George Michael Carman pts 6 Matthew Ryan
Ben Ileyemi TKO 2 Stanislavs Makarenko



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