By Scott Gilfoid: #6 WBC heavyweight contender Anthony Joshua (12-0, 12 KOs) will continue his slow climb up the heavyweight ladder this Saturday night when he gets inside the ring with 35-year-old former world title challenger Kevin “Kingpin” Johnson (29-6-1, 14 KOs) in a 12 round bout at the O2 Arena in London, UK.
This is a fight that would have been interesting six years ago when Johnson was 29-years-old and still in his prime, but he’s clearly no longer the same fighter that fought former WBC heavyweight champion Vitali Klitschko in 2009 in losing a 12 round unanimous decision.
Johnson, who is now little more than journeyman looking for whatever paydays he can get in the sport, has lost four out of his last five fights. It’s gotten so bad for Johnson that he’s now getting beaten by fighters like Manuel Charr, Christian Hammer, Dereck Chisora, and Tor Hamer.
About the only thing that we can get from this Saturday’s fight is to see whether Johnson can extend the heavily muscled Joshua the full 12 round distance so that we can see whether he can fight for 12 rounds without collapsing from the strain of carrying around all that muscle on his once slender frame.
Joshua captured a controversial gold medal in the 2012 Olympics, and his promoter Eddie Hearn has been bringing him along like someone who didn’t have much of an amateur career rather than someone who won the gold in the London Olympics. For that reason, boxing fans get to see mismatches like Joshua-Johnson and Joshua vs. Jason Gavern.
“Johnson is very experienced so he will be playing mind games and will be talking to me while I’m in the ring,” Joshua said via Skysports.com. “He’s hard to hit so
I’ve just got to go in there with the attitude of taking each round step-by-step and break him down like a tree. I’m going to keep chopping him down till he falls.”
Joshua had better be careful while trying to chop down Johnson because he does have a decent left hook, and he’s not afraid to let it go when he’s got someone that is standing square to him the way Joshua tends to do when fighting.
When Joshua is going for the kill, he always squares up and throws arm shots. He doesn’t have the snap in his shots, so he flurries on them with arm punches. I’m not sure why he’s not able to get his body into his shots the way good heavyweights do. All I can think is that Joshua’s just so tight from all the muscles that he’s put on his 6’6” frame, and that possibly keeps him from being able to get his body into his shots the way you see from good heavyweights like Deontay Wilder.
If Johnson is able to clip Joshua with one of his hooks, this could be an interesting fight. Further, if Johnson can get Joshua into the deep end of the fight, we could see Joshua gas out like we saw with James DeGale last Saturday.
All of Joshua’s fights against fodder opposition have ended early with him knocking out his hapless opponents. But we could find out that Joshua is yet another fighter that doesn’t have the stamina to fight 12 round bouts.
Guys with tons of muscles often have problems in the stamina department, and they become really weak, slow and tired once their fights go to the 9th round and beyond. Will that happen with Joshua this Saturday? I don’t know, but I wouldn’t be at all surprised.
Also on the Joshua vs. Johnson card is IBF welterweight champion Kell Brook defending his IBF strap against #4 Frankie Gavin in what shapes up to be a mismatch. WBC lightweight champion Jorge Linares will be fighting Kevin Mitchell in a 12 round bout. IBF featherweight champion Evgeny Gradovich defends his title against Lee Selby. These fights are obviously much better than the Joshua-Johnson mismatch.
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