By Scott Gilfoid: #6 WBC Anthony Joshua (13-0, 13 KO) believes that WBC heavyweight champion Deontay Wilder (33-0, 32 KOs) will throw him a bone sooner rather than later by giving him a world title shot due to the 6’7” Wilder wanting to get an up and coming challenger to defend his title against.
Joshua for some reason thinks that he’s going to get a fight against David Haye in the future as well, and he sees his fight against Deontay coming before a fight against Haye.
It’s unclear who planted this idea into Joshua’s head about Haye fighting him, but someone needs to sit him down and point out that Haye hasn’t fought in ages and it’s debatable whether he’ll ever fight again. But even if the soon to be 35-year-old Haye does come back in the future, I sure as heck don’t see him fighting Joshua. Haye already said what his plans are for his comeback. He wants to stay in the lane that leads to a fight against Wilder. I don’t see Haye taking on anyone worthwhile before he gets that title shot.
“Deontay Wilder is a world champion. He hasn’t got that much experience but he has raw power, which has led him to become world champion,” Joshua said to Hawksbee and Jacobs at Talksport.com. “He’s going to look at the up-and-coming fighters that are doing well. That’s why I think I’ll get a shot at the heavyweight championship sooner, rather than later.”
Wilder may indeed give Joshua a world title fight in the near future, but Haye can forget about that nonsense about Haye fighting him because I don’t see that happening in this lifetime. Haye was supposed to be fighting in 2015, but thus far he’s kind of disappeared from the radar screen. I’d be very, very surprised if Haye fights at all in 2015. The thing is the longer Haye waits, the worse it’s going to be for him. He hasn’t fought since 2012, if he waits until 2016 to fight, he’ll have been out of the ring for four years. I know George Foreman and Vitali Klitschko were able to both come back and be successful following a long layoff, but those guys were big heavyweights. Haye isn’t big, and he’s more like a cruiserweight than a heavyweight.
“It [a title shot against Deontay] could happen before a fight against David Haye,” Joshua said. “It’s possible I could bring Haye out of retirement. It would be a great match up. When the time is right and I’ve got the right experience, it will be a mega fight. It would be bigger than me versus Tyson Fury.”
That sounds like a serious pipe dream that Joshua has going. When he talks like this, he sounds very naïve and even younger than his chronological age. Haye isn’t going to fight Joshua. Haye wants Wilder, and of course he’d like to fight Wladimir Klitschko again. The only way I see Haye showing interest in facing Joshua is maybe five or six years down the line if Joshua becomes popular in the UK. I could see Haye asking for a fight at that point. But we’re talking about Haye being 40-years-old at that point, and he probably won’t be relevant in the heavyweight division like he’s not relevant now. He’d be an aging old guy trying to scratch up a payday. If Joshua fights Haye at that point it’s going to likely look like mercy rather than a fight that fans want to see.
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