By Scott Gilfoid: Promoter Eddie Hearn is going to wait until November or December before he steps his fighter heavyweight Anthony Joshua (13-0, 13 KOs) up a couple levels and puts him in with unbeaten talent Dillian Whyte (14-0, 11 KOs) at that time.
Joshua will be fighting on September 12th, which would be the ideal date for the Joshua-Whyte fight, but for some reason Hearn wants to put the fight off for a little while longer. It could be that Hearn wants Joshua to get a little more seasoning with his September fight before finally allowing him to step inside the ring with his former conqueror Whyte.
With the awful opposition that Hearn has been putting in with Joshua, I don’t think there’s any point in him waiting one more fight before throwing him in with Whyte. It’s not as if Hearn will match Joshua against anyone good for his September. They’re talking about Mariusz Wach as being a possibility for Joshua, but Wach looked absolutely dreadful in his recent win over Konstantin Airech.
Wach doesn’t have the hand speed to make for a useful fight for Joshua. If he’s picked out for Joshua’s fight in September, then Hearn might as well drag out Kevin Johnson or Jason Gavern again for Joshua to fight, because he’ll get about as much preparation fighting them than he would against Wach.
“This is a fight that is inevitable. I’ve been talking to Dillian Whyte for two months regarding this fight and we’re looking to make it in November or December with the possibility of getting Dillian out in the meantime,” Hearn said to Skysports.com.
Whyte whipped Joshua in 2009 in an amateur contest in which he clearly dropped Joshua twice. The referee blew one of the calls by failing to rule a clear knockdown when Joshua was leveled by a left hook from Whyte that left Joshua flying into the ropes. Without the ropes, Joshua clearly would have been dropped.
Hearn is really confident that Joshua will beat Whyte this time around now that he’s had six years of seasoning. I don’t know about that though.
In Joshua’s fights in the Olympics, which is really the only fights you can really count because of the awful opposition he’s faced as a pro, Joshua struggled badly against fighters that came straight at him and threw a lot of punches. All four of Joshua’s opponents – Erislandy Savon, Roberto Cammarelle, Zhang Zhilei and Ivan Dychko went straight at Joshua and didn’t take a backwards step. As such, they appeared to beat him in my eyes. While the Zhilei and Dychko fights were close enough to be scored as draws, the Cammarelle and Savon fights looked to be clear victories for those fighters over Joshua. My point is that those guys showed how you beat Joshua by always going forward, throwing a lot of punches, and never backing up for an instant. The guys that Hearn has been feeding Joshua since he turned pro have done the opposite. They don’t throw punches, they back up constantly, and they just hang on the ropes. Hearn might as well dragged out a punching bags and set them up on the ropes because that’s pretty much all Joshua has been getting out of the awful opposition that Hearn has been feeding him.
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