Anthony Joshua focused on getting win against Gary Cornish

By Boxing News - 07/23/2015 - Comments

joshua100By Scott Gilfoid: Undefeated #2 WBC heavyweight contender Anthony Joshua (13-0, 13 KOs) says he doesn’t care how he gets his victory over little known Gary Cornish (21-0, 12 KOs) in their fight on September 12th at the O2 Arena in London, UK. Joshua just wants to get a victory no matter how it comes about.

The 25-year-old Joshua says he’d like to go 12 rounds so that he can get rounds in, but he’s not going to just take it easy on his opponents in order to let the fight go that far. Joshua doesn’t want to take needless punishment, and put himself at risk of getting hit on the temple with a hard enough shot to get hurt.

If Joshua’s promoter Eddie Hearn had started matching him against better opposition a long time ago, he wouldn’t have had a problem getting rounds in, because Joshua obviously wouldn’t have been able to have nearly as many knockouts on his resume like he does now. But Hearn has been taking it easy with him, matching Joshua against the same level of opposition that we saw David Price get matched up against before he was eventually put in with a decent opponent and badly exposed.

You obviously have to hope that we don’t see the same fate befall Joshua that we saw with Price. But if you look at how poor Joshua looked in the London Olympics in 2012, it’s quite possible he’ll be exposed when he steps it up later this year against the talented Dillian Whyte in November or December.

“The main thing is getting that win. If I was to go the 12 rounds and knock him out in the last 10 seconds, it’s just about how I win,” Joshua said via Skysports.com. “If I go out there and box him for 12 rounds and people say it was a masterclass then I’ll be happy with that.”

Joshua is guessing that he’ll put on a masterclass if he gets extended the full 12 rounds by Cornish in their fight for the vacant Commonwealth heavyweight title on September 12th. It’s quite possible that Joshua could run out of gas long before the 12th round, and look terrible. I mean, Joshua has knocking everyone out in three rounds since he turned pro in 2013, and he’s put on a lot of muscle in the last year. You don’t normally see fighters put on 20 pounds of muscle in just one year. Normally fighters gradually put on a little bit of muscle over a number of years.

With Joshua, he’s put on unreal muscle in just a year, and that’s not good. You don’t want to do that because it’ll slow you down when you eventually stop fighting 3rd tier heavyweights. Right now, it’s not working against Joshua because Hearn is still feeding him 3rd tier fodder to make him look good, but when Joshua gets inside the ring with Dillian Whyte later this year, I think the party is going to be over for Joshua. He’s going to find himself in a grueling fight where his extra muscle is going to slow him down, make him tired, and cause him a lot of problems later in the fight.

You just have to hope that Joshua doesn’t wind up like Price in getting knocked out, because it would really put a damper on Hearn’s high hopes for Joshua. Hearn has practically crowned Joshua already as the next heavyweight world champion despite the fact that he’s been facing awful opposition. I mean, you would think that Hearn would hold off on the crowing about Joshua’s potential until he at least fought someone with a pulse rate.

“Even though I’d love to go in there and box, I’ve got the same mentality as them and they’re coming to knock me out. I don’t want them to take away everything I’m working for,” Joshua said.

I think it would be bad for Joshua to try and box Cornish because if he gets extended past the 8th round, I could see Joshua possibly fading and being too tired to finish the fight. With Joshua’s lack of experience in fighting beyond 3 rounds, he pretty much has to keep his fights short because if he all of a sudden gets extended for the first time, I think it’ll go badly for Joshua.



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