By Scott Gilfoid: The heavily muscled undefeated British heavyweight prospect Anthony Joshua (3-0, 3 KO’s) won’t be able to make it to his scheduled December 14th fight against Dorian Darch 7-2, 1 KO’) due to a shoulder injury suffered in training. The fight has been rescheduled for February 1st at the Motorpoint Arena, Cardiff, Wales, United Kingdom.
The shoulder problem could be a lingering thing for the 24-year-old Joshua, who captured a gold medal in the London Olympics in 2012. Joshua’s promoter Eddie Hearn might want to put the 6’6″ Joshua on the shelf for as long as possible because he doesn’t appear to be very flexible with his heavy muscles, and this kind of injury could linger on and on. When watching Joshua fight, he appears very tight with his upper body, and he seems to lack the snap on his shots due to all the muscles he’s carrying.
The speed isn’t there, and seems to throw mostly arm punches. The injury problem would seem to be the obvious result of Joshua being so tight and heavily muscled. Hopefully this doesn’t become a career thing for him, because his Hearn has high hopes for him. Hearn thinks Joshua is a future world champions. I’m not sure that I see the same thing in Joshua. He doesn’t fast, limber enough or powerful enough to capture a world title unless it’s a situation where he gets the ideal match-up in terms of opponents. But even then, I don’t see Joshua as someone that can hold down a belt against guys that are powerful and have flexibility.
Hearn was hoping to have Joshua fight frequently to push him up the ladder quickly to get him to the European level and then the world level. but it looks like Joshua’s body isn’t going to let him follow Hearn’s vision thing for him. Hearn will need to realize that Joshua has to be taken slowly in order for him not to keep injured.
Joshua might be better off losing 15-20 pounds of muscle, and working on flexibility and speed exercises because he’s just too heavily muscles right now. We could see the injuries being a constant thing with him as he gets older. If he’s breaking down at 24, where’s he going to be in his late 20s and in his 30s?
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