By Scott Gilfoid: British heavyweight prospect Anthony Joshua (1-0, 1 KO’s) made his pro debut last night in stopping a game but badly over-matched Emanuele Leo (8-1, 3 KO’s) in the 1st round at the O2 Arena in London, UK.
Joshua will be back in the ring later this month on October 26th against an opponent still to be determined on the undercard of the welterweight match-up between Kell Brook and former WBA 147 lb. champion Vyacheslav Senchenko at the Motorpoint Arena, Sheffield, Yorkshire, United Kingdom.
Joshua said to Sky Sports “It will probably be another tough opponent…I’ll be back in training to prepare for whoever I’ve got to compete against.”
Another tough opponent? I hadn’t realized that Leo was a tough opponent. Joshua’s promoter Eddie Hearn had talked for for the past week how Leo was someone that would give Joshua a good fight, but it this was hardly a tough opponent like Hearn had described it.
At 23, Joshua is going to need to make some major improvements before he can ever be considered a potential contender on the world scene. Right now Joshua looks and fights more like a body builder than a fighter. Joshua needs to get down to the mid 220s like Deontay Wilder. If Joshua could get down that low, I think he’d find a lot more hand speed and possibly some power along with it.
I’ve seen other body builder type fighters and only a handful of them have punching power. I guess all the useless muscle isn’t ideal for generating punching power and hand speed.
As I mentioned earlier, what I saw last night was a fighter with less power than other British heavyweights like Dereck Chisora, John McDermott, David Price, David Haye, Tyson Fury and Hughie Fury. I don’t rate Hughie and Tyson Fury as being punchers at all, yet both of them look more snap in their shots and more force compared to Joshua.
It took way many punches for Joshua to get Leo out last night, and it kind of showed the lack of power that Joshua has. This is going to creep up and bite him on the backside when he starts facing quality opposition that actually can punch. I mean, I’m not expecting Hearn to match Joshua against a puncher in the next 3-5 years, but if he builds up an inflated resume and gets ranked high, then Joshua will need to face a puncher if he’s to get a title shot against one of the champions.
The Klitschkos will be gone by then, but Deontay Wilder will be there and he’ll tear Joshua apart with his huge speed and power advantage over him. All those shots that Leo was nailing Joshua with last night would be potential knockout blows with Deontay landing the same punches.
I don’t think Hearn is doing Joshua any favors by having him headline fights because he’s not shown the potential in his game for him to be headlining fights at this early age from my perspective.
What we don’t want is Joshua to be another Audley Harrison type fighter with him being heavily hyped after winning a super heavyweight gold medal. We saw Audley build up a fluff record early in his pro career over weak opponents, but once he started facing decent quality opposition then the losses started. And the thing is Audley looked a heck of a lot better winning his gold medal than Joshua did.
There was nothing controversial about Audley’s victories in the Olympics, because he totally dominated all of his opponents. Audley came into the pro game with good power and real fluid fighting style. Unfortunately his ability to take a punch and poor defense kept him from achieving what he could have.
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