By Scott Gilfoid: Heavyweight Anthony Joshua (11-0, 11 KOs) will be putting his unbeaten record on the line tonight against the hard hitting journeyman Rafael Zumbano Love (36-10-1, 29 KOs) tonight in what should be an easy win for him at the Barclaycard Arena in Birmingham, UK.
Joshua, 6’6”, wants to do things his way and face the guys at his own pace rather than step up and start fighting the talented heavyweights in the division. The 2012 Olympic super heavyweight gold medalist still has a long ways to go before he’s proven himself as being capable of winning a world title.
Joshua’s promoter Eddie Hearn has practically crowned him as the next heavyweight world champion despite the fact that Joshua hasn’t shown the kind of talent that would suggest that he can accomplish that. He looks slow on his feet, and he doesn’t have defensive skills. We don’t know how good Joshua’s chin is right now because Hearn hasn’t matched him against any punchers for some reason.
We did see that Joshua was dropped by Dillian Whyte in the amateur ranks in losing a fight to him. We also saw Joshua arguably lose two of his Olympic matches to Roberto Cammarelle and Erislandy Savon in the London Olympics in 2012.
“Saturday is very important,” said Joshua via matchroomboxing.com. “My conditioning is improving day by day and my focus is totally on this fight – I want to put in an explosive performance for the fans. I will do things my way though, I have from the start and I will continue to do that. Everyone wants to fight me and I want to fight everyone, but I can’t fight them all at once, this is not WWE wrestling, this is boxing – we’ll do it at the right time and one at a time.”
In saying that he’ll do things his way, Joshua comes across as a bit of a know it all. You don’t like to see that from a fighter who has only 11 fights under his belt because it could give a big hint about the type of fighter that he may develop into in the future. You have to wonder if all that soft match-making that Hearn has done for Joshua is starting to go to the head where he’s believing that he’s better than he actually is.
I hope that’s not the case because it would be such a pity of Joshua got thrown in the ring with someone good and then got badly exposed. All we can really gone on with Joshua is his fights in the amateur ranks against Savon, Cammarelle and Whyte, and as far as I’m concerned, Joshua failed those three tests. The opposition that Hearn has put in the ring with Joshua has been nothing short of awful. Hearn hasn’t matched Joshua against anyone with the kind of talent that would test him, and that’s going to continue to be the case tonight in his fight against the 34-year-old Love, who has lost four out of his last seven fights.
Love flattened his last opponent Esteban Hillman Tababary by a 1st round knockout last month. Before that, Love was beaten by Charles Martin and Eric Molina in back to back knockout losses. Rather than matching Joshua against Love, Hearn should be putting him in with the guys that beat him recently like Martin, Molina, Shannon Briggs, Fabrice Aurieng, Jovo Pudar and Shane Andreesen. It doesn’t make a lot of sense for Hearn to be putting Joshua in with a fighter that has been beaten as many times as Love has been. It just comes across as soft match-making for Joshua.
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