By Scott Gilfoid: Promoter Eddie Hearn of Matchroom sports plans on moving former 2012 Olympic super heavyweight gold medalist Anthony Joshua along quickly with his career. Hearn wants to have Joshua fight for the British heavyweight title after only his 10th fight. This is news because the current British heavyweight champion is the 6’8” David Price, and he’s a much better puncher than the 6’6” Joshua.
Hearn said to Sky Sports News “You’ve got Anthony Joshua. He looks the real deal and now he’s got to get in there and show it…He’s got all the attributes of a fantastic heavyweight…after 10 fights we’ll be looking for a British title. Joshua will have three or four fights before the end of the year.”
It’s difficult to imagine Joshua going for in the heavyweight division, as he was more of an arm puncher than a slugger. I mean, he has huge size for a heavyweight, but the power just isn’t there. He captured the gold medal, but all four of Joshua’s wins in the Olympics were very controversial with fans seeing him losing.
Joshua appeared to lose to Cuba’s Erislandy Savon, China’s Zhilei Zhang, Ukraine’s Ivan Dychko and Italy’s Roberto Cammarelle. Joshua’s win over Cammarelle was HIGHLY questionable to where an avalanche of boxing fans outside of the UK thought that Cammarelle had been robbed.
The same goes for Savon. Like I said, I have Joshua losing all four of his fights in the Olympics. But the fact that Joshua couldn’t beat any of these guys without controversy suggests that he’s not going to be the next big thing, unless you consider Zhang, Savon, Dychko and Cammarelle as the next big things in the heavyweight division.
Do I think Joshua can beat Price? It’s possible if he push a fast pace, but I’m not even sure Price will still be fighting by the time Joshua gets to his 10th fight. If Price keeps losing left and right, I can see him retiring. But I would give Price a puncher’s chance of beating Joshua, because he’s the much better puncher than him, and we already saw that Joshua is easy to hit.
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