By Scott Gilfoid: Unbeaten heavyweight prospect Anthony Joshua (5-0, 5 KO’s) will be fighting on the undercard of the Carl Froch vs. George Groves 2 fight card on May 31st at Wembley Stadium, in London, UK. There still isn’t an opponent for the fight date, but Joshua is hoping it’s a step up from the weak opposition he’s been facing. Being that he captured the Olympic gold medal in the 2012 London Olympics, Joshua should be facing much better opposition at this point of his career.
You see someone like Vasyl Lomachenko fighting for a world title after just 1 fight as a pro. Joshua should be stepping it up and facing the top contenders to get a title shot as soon as possible. There’s no sense waiting years and years before putting hi in with a good heavyweight, because Joshua is the finished product at this point. This is as good as it gets with him.
“[The] Future heavyweight champion of the world will be doing his thing at Wembley,” promoter Eddie Hearn revealed to Sky Sports.
“I’m sure I’ll dazzle them,” Joshua said. “I’m sure I’ll have a tough opponent and I’ll do it in spectacular fashion.”
Joshua is coming off of a hand injury that he suffered in his recent win over Hector Alfredo Avila last March. This is the second injury that Joshua has suffered recently. He had a shoulder injury not long ago that prevented him from taking a fight that he wanted. At 24, it’s not a good sign that Joshua is already getting injured left and right. I have a feeling that Joshua could end up being one of those fighters who spends more time healing from injuries than he does actually fighting.
Hearn is pretty much wasting the 6’6” 240lb Joshua’s time with the God awful fodder that he’s been feeding him since he turned pro in October of last year. The general rule of thumb is that if you’ve got an Olympic gold medalist, it counts for over 20+ pro fights already under the fighter’s belt. As such, you don’t need to spend five years feeding them fodder and wasting time in putting them in with fights that do little for them.
With the talented Deontay Wilder, he’s been brought slowly because he didn’t have much amateur experience at all before making it on the U.S Olympic squad in 2008. He’s someone that picked up the sport and was able to immediately knock his way onto the Olympic team with devastating punching power alone. However, he remained a very green fighter even after taking the bronze medal. So that’s why he’s been taken so slowly since turning pro in 2009. He had to learn the game due to his short amateur career. But with Joshua, he’s had tons of amateur experience, and he doesn’t need to be fed the weak opponents that Hearn has been giving to him.
Knowing Hearn, he’ll likely stick the Joshua fight in the co-feature bout, even if he’s got some guy without a pulse. It doesn’t seem to matter. The British fight fans will be overjoyed to see Joshua fight, and it doesn’t seem to matter if the fighter he winds up facing is someone without a hope.
Joshua needs to lose some of that useless muscle he’s carrying around and focus on trying to develop some hand speed and punching power. He looks like he’s carrying around 20lbs of excess muscle on his frame that he could lose. If he could take that weight off, and focus on his hand speed, he’d be 100 percent better than he is. I would have Joshua running wind sprints daily to work on his speed. I’d get him in the gym and focus on having him throw combinations as fast as he could without loading up. He needs to learn to put his body behind his shots, because he’s just an arm puncher at this point, and all that muscle makes him really limited in terms of his flexibility.
As far as Hearn saying that Joshua will be a future heavyweight champion, I don’t see him having the talent to win a world title. Right now, Joshua just looks like a slow, over-muscled arm puncher without much power and without much flexibility. He reminds me of a body builder with the way he throws punches. It’s real slow and without the force that you see from less muscular fighters with great flexibility.
Joshua needs to pick up more power and hand speed like Deontay Wilder, because right now he’s just some big guy who throws arm punches, but who lacks the speed and power he’ll need to get to the neck level.
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