Lennox Lewis says Tyson Fury better than Anthony Joshua

By Boxing News - 06/22/2016 - Comments

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By Scott Gilfoid: While Matchroom Sport promoter Barry Hearn says he thinks IBF heavyweight champion Anthony Joshua is the No.1 heavyweight in the division, former world champion Lennox Lewis isn’t on board with that opinion. Until he sees Joshua fight in a 12 round contest and show some boxing ability, he feels that IBO/WBA/WBO heavyweight champion Tyson Fury (25-0, 18 KOs) is the best by virtue of his recent 12 round decision win over Wladimir Klitschko last November.

Lewis isn’t sure whether the heavily muscled 6’6”, 250lb Joshua can actually box, because he’s not shown it in the past. Joshua has shown that he can slug, and that’s all he’s shown since turning pro in 2013.

You can make an argument that Joshua showed a tiny bit of boxing in his fight against Dillian Whyte in 2015, when he backed off from him after getting knocked silly by a left hook in round two. However, Joshua didn’t use any movement to speak of in that fight. He just backed up and stayed on the outside and didn’t mix it up like he’d done in the first two rounds.

If Whyte’s shoulder wasn’t injured and if he hadn’t gassed out, he easily could have moved in punching range and continued to blast left hooks off the chin of the stationary Joshua in the same way that Mihai Nistor did in his fight against Joshua in 2011.

“Tyson Fury is the best right now, I really think so,” Lewis said to The Mirror. “Joshua has got great power, he’s the future. I think he’s doing a great job right now. His next fight is a good fight for him, Dominic Breazeale. It’s a good step up, which everyone wants to see. But Tyson is number-one, because he is the heavyweight champion of the world,” said Lewis.

Yeah, I don’t buy into Lewis’ bit about Fury being the best in the world. I mean, he might be better than Joshua, but there’s still a heck of a lot of other heavyweights that he still has to prove himself against before he can be considered as the No.1 guy in my view. How about Fury fighting WBC heavyweight champion Deontay Wilder? If Fury beats Deontay, then he would have a good argument that he at least should be considered among the top fighters in the division. Fury would still need to beat Luis “The Real King Kong” Ortiz.

The only top guy that Fury has beaten thus far is Wladimir Klitschko, and that was against a 40-year-old version of Wladimir. I don’t think Wladimir was ready for his fight against Fury last November, to be honest. Wladimir has had years and years of training at using his height and reach against smaller fighters. When he fought the 6’9” Fury, he didn’t know how to revert back to fighting aggressively like he used to before he was trained by the late Emanuel Steward.

Before Steward took over as Wladimir’s trainer in 2004, he was an aggressive fighter that rarely clinched and would punch until he gassed out. The thing is, Wladimir would usually KO his opponents long before he gassed out in his fight. I don’t think Fury would have made it to the later rounds to test Wladimir’s questionable stamina if he came out slugging last November instead of holding and not punching.

“He didn’t get it handed to him – he earned it,” said Lewis about Fury in speaking about his win over Wladimir. “Can Joshua box? No, because he hasn’t reached that level yet. His longest fight has lasted eight rounds (actually 7-rounds, the win over Dillian Whyte). He hasn’t been taken deep into fights like Tyson Fury has. Fury has gone 12 rounds on his toes, so who’s better? You have to say Fury right now.”

It’s painfully obvious that Joshua can’t box, and he never has been able to. He’s like the anti-Lewis. Joshua has always been a slugger since day one when he was in the amateur ranks. If you look at the earliest fuzzy video if him on Youtube fighting as an amateur, you’ll see Joshua slugging it out and looking slow on his feet. He’s too heavily muscled in my view for him to be a boxer. He has the wrong type of frame to be a boxer, and his wheels and jab aren’t good enough to become one.

When Joshua tried to move away from Nistor in their fight in the amateurs, the Romanian fighter was easily able to trap Joshua against the ropes and continue to pummel him until the referee had to step in and stop the fight in round three.

I don’t see Joshua being able to go far once he starts getting knocked out left and right by his opposition. he won’t be able to adapt and change his style to become more of a boxer because he doesn’t have the boxing skills for him to be able to do that.