By Scott Gilfoid: Matchroom Sport promoter Eddie Hearn expects know by next week whether the rematch between IBF/WBA heavyweight champion Anthony Joshua and Wladimir Klitschko will be taking place. The two giant heavyweights are expected to fight each other on November 11 at the beautiful T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas, Nevada. However, it’s still unclear if the soon to be 42-year-old Klitschko will take the fight or not.
The options for the location of the Joshua-Klitschko fight were originally Nigeria, UK and U.S. They decided on Las Vegas being the best location. Hearn wants to turn Joshua into a big star in the States. Having him fight Wladimir in Vegas is an excellent way to build his name brand quickly if he wins and looks good. If Joshua fights like he did last time, he could lose. If Joshua loses his energy after 6 round, Wladimir will likely knock him out this time around. Wladimir has had a lot of time to digest and analyze what he did wrong in the previous fight 4 months ago, and he’ll know that he must finish Joshua once he’s fighting on fumes. Joshua looked tired even in round 5. I noticed that, and I thought that he would have problems if Wladimir made him fight hard. Sure enough, Joshua punched himself out in the 6th and he was ready for the taking.
The former undisputed world champion Klitschko has been taking his sweet time in letting the boxing world know if he’ll take the second fight against the 27-year-old Joshua. Wladimir lost to Joshua on April 29 in getting stopped in the 11th round.
Wladimir probably should have won the fight if he’d showed some ring smarts and went all out to finish the badly hurt and exhausted Joshua in the 6th round. Joshua was there for the taking in rounds 6 through 9, as he was exhausted from having exerted himself in the 6th. Joshua’s cardiovascular system kept him from recovering quickly in rounds 7 through 9.
You can blame that on all that useless muscle that Joshua was carrying around for the fight. He weighed 250 pounds at the weigh-in the day before the fight. In hindsight, Joshua should have trimmed down to at least 235 to 240 in order to handle the mobility and speed of Wladimir. Rather than doing that, Joshua looked like he prepared for the fight by hanging out in the weight room, pumping iron 24/7.
All that muscle weight ended up biting Joshua in the backside when he tanked out in the 6th. Honestly, it was pretty sad to see. It’s always sad when you see a hyped fighter exposed the way that the heavily muscled Joshua was by Klitschko. Before the fight, Hearn had been working up lather, bragging about how Joshua was going to carry the heavyweight division on his back for the next 10 years.
What we saw instead was a fighter that could/should have been at the end of his short reign in 2017 if not for Wladimir’s decision to let Joshua off the hook after he gassed. All that bragging that Hearn did about Joshua was funny after the fact. Hearn seemed clueless in how limited Joshua truly is. Thankfully, Hearn isn’t blabbering about how great Joshua is since that fight. Hearn has toned it down dramatically, taking a wait and see approach before he starts crowing about how great Joshua is once again.
“I think by the end of next week, we’ll have a final decision in terms of venue and opponent for Anthony Joshua,” said Hearn to skysports.com. “At the moment, everything is geared towards Wladimir Klitschko in Las Vegas. There are some interesting dynamics to the commercials of the deal, which we are working through with [Klitschko’s manager] Bernd Boente.”
It would be a huge disappointment for Hearn and Joshua if Wladimir decides to take his marbles and go home and retire from boxing. Hearn and Joshua have been pining away in hoping that Wlaidmir will make the rematch. This is the biggest name that Joshua can fight. To be honest, Joshua may never be involved in another fight as big as his previous one against Wladimir. There isn’t anyone in the heavyweight division right now that has the popularity of Wladimir.
It takes too long to build that kind of popularity up. Wladimir is a 1996 Olympic gold medalist from Ukraine, and unlike Joshua, his gold medal wasn’t controversial. Wladimir dominated his competition in the 1996 Olympics. In contrast, Joshua was involved in 3 very questionable wins in the 2012 London Olympics. Fighting in his own hometown in London in front of a supportive crowd, Joshua won debatable fights against Robert Cammarelle (Italy) +18 [decided by count back], Erislandy Savon (Cuba) 17-16, Ivan Dychko (Kazakhstan) 13-11 and Zhang Zhilei (China) 15-11. Like I said, I had Joshua losing all 4 of those fights. I had no dog in this hunt. I just thought Joshua lost all 4 fights.
Hearn hasn’t said what he’ll do if Wladimir chooses not to take the rematch with Joshua. It’s likely that Hearn will go ahead and schedule Joshua’s title defense against his International Boxing Federation mandatory challenger Kubrat Pulev in November if he’s available to fight at that time.
Joshua and Hearn were expected to make the fight with Pulev in the first quarter of 2018. But if Wladimir decides he doesn’t want to make the rematch, then Joshua will need to look in another direction toward Pulev or whoever is available that makes sense. WBC heavyweight champion Deontay Wilder would be a great fight to make if Wladimir doesn’t want the rematch with Joshua.
“It can’t be age, because for instance Floyd Mayweather is the same age as Klitschko and Floyd Mayweather is fresh, Klitschko is fresh,” said Joshua in talking to Sky Sports News about his thoughts on why Wladimir hasn’t made the decision to take the rematch with him yet. ”His brother is probably advising him not to do it again.”
Joshua seems to think that it should be an easy decision for Wladimir to decide on whether to take the rematch or not. It’s not. Wladimir is old, and he’s been fighting as a pro since Joshua was 6-years-old. When Joshua is 42 and he’s got a young lion pushing him to fight, my guess is he won’t be chomping at the bit to get inside the ring with him.
I don’t see Joshua still being relevant when he’s 42. If Joshua is still fighting at 42, I doubt he’ll be a top guy. Joshua has got serious stamina problems, and I can’t picture him being able to take on a young lion that pushes him to fight hard for more than one round. We saw Joshua gas out after just 2 rounds in the Dillian Whyte fight in 2015. Who can forget the sight of Joshua gassing out in the 2nd round after being pushed hard by Whyte.
Like in the Klitschko fight it took Joshua three rounds to get his second wind. If Whyte hadn’t suffered a shoulder injury and if he hadn’t gassed out himself in the same round, he very likely would have finished off Joshua in the 3rd. Imagine Joshua being 14 years older than he is now at 41, with some younger heavyweight pushing him for a rematch. Would Joshua take a rematch with a young lion when he’s old and gray at 41? I doubt it. I don’t see Joshua being eager to fight that age.
I think Joshua will retire or be retired long before he hits his 40s. I hate to say it but Joshua’s not built for long a career in boxing like Wladimir due to his heavily muscled physique and his poor mobility. Wladimir is a rare heavyweight, who can move well, and who has huge punching power and speed. What I noticed about the Joshua-Klitschko 1 fight was how much faster Wladimir was faster than Joshua. That was the surprising thing about their fight on April 29. I thought it would be the other way around with Joshua being the quicker guy. Many of the boxing fans were barking loudly in the buildup to the fight, saying that Joshua had the much faster hand speed than Wladimir and how he was going to overwhelm the aging Ukrainian with his speed.
Unfortunately for Joshua and his many boxing fans, when the two heavyweights got inside the ring, it was immediately clear that Wladimir was the MUCH faster fighter of the two. Wladimir just didn’t have the chin, ring smarts or the aggressiveness to take advantage of Joshua when he gassed out in the 6th. Even with Wladimir’s chin problem, he still could have won the fight if he’d smart and ruthless in going after Joshua when he faded. You’ve got to put the blame for the defeat squarely on Wladimir’s shoulders, because his trainer Johnathon Banks was giving him good instructions in his corner. Banks was telling Wladimir the right things in between rounds. He just wasn’t carrying out the instructions. If that had been Wladimir’s older brother Vitali Klitschko inside the ring with Joshua on the night, he wouldn’t have had to be told what to do. Vitali would have been on cruise control and he’d have been like a shark smelling blood in the water. Vitali would have chopped Joshua down straightaway in the 7th round and gone home the winner.
It’s going to be a big letdown if Wladimir doesn’t take the rematch with Joshua, but oh well. Joshua will have to move on and face Pulev. After he gets Pulev out of the way, the real fun begins, as Joshua could face Deontay in a unification fight or the winner of the Joseph Parker vs. Hughie Fury fight. Parker will obviously smash Hughie to bits in that fight. It’ll be interesting to see how well Parker does against Joshua if he stands and fights instead of boxing him like he did against Andy Ruiz. Parker’s best chance of beating Joshua is to stand in the pocket and make him fight hard for at least one round to tire him out. Once Joshua gasses out, he’ll be easy pickings.
To be honest, I think Joshua gasses out much quicker than a young George Foreman. If you watch some of Foreman’s fights when he was young, he could go to war for at least 5 rounds before he’d gas out. Foreman’s fight against Ron Lyle on January 24, 1976 was epic. The 27-year-old Foreman was the same age as Joshua is now, but his stamina was far better. In the 4th round, Foreman gassed out against Lyle and was dropped twice. However, Foreman came back in the 5th to knockout Lyle after trapping him against the ropes. Foreman didn’t look in great shape for that fight compared to his 2nd round demolition job he did against Joe Frazier three years earlier in 1973. I can’t see Joshua being able to fight as hard as Foreman did in the Lyle fight without gassing out and staying gassed out. It’s troublesome that Joshua’s stamina is probably worse than a young Foreman. What this means is that fighters can plan for that and use it to beat Joshua in the future if they’re smart, and willing to go for the finisher once he tires. Wladimir probably shouldn’t take the rematch with Joshua if he’s unwilling to improve on his performance. If Wladimir fights the same way against Joshua as he did last time, he’ll lose. Joshua will bide his time and look to nail Wladimir with an uppercut when he goes to clinch, which he frequently does.