By Scott Gilfoid: Unbeaten British heavyweight Anthony Joshua (15-0, 15 KOs) has 18 days to go before he steps inside the ring against undefeated IBF heavyweight champion Charles Martin (23-0-1, 21 KOs) on April 9 on Sky Box Office at the O2 Arena in London, England.
Joshua thinks the 6’5” Martin is a cool customer the way he doesn’t stress out in the heat of battle. Martin keeps it together mentally and picks up opponents apart with his powerful left hand shots to the head. Martin’s southpaw style and his huge size gives his opponents big time problems, and he expects the slightly taller 6’6” Joshua to have the same kinds of problems as the other guys have had in the past.
Joshua, 26, says he plans on putting the heat on Martin to make it an unpredictable fight. In other words, Joshua plans on bum rushing Martin to try and bang up out in the first couple of rounds like he’s done with all the poor opponents that his promoter Eddie Hearn has found for him to blow through.
I think Joshua might find out in a hurry that it’s a mistake for him to continue his reckless fighting style against the true top tier opposition in the heavyweight division. It’s okay to fight like an amateur when matched against the 3rd tier fodder that Hearn has been digging up for Joshua since he turned pro, but now that he’s skipping from 3rd tier to 1st tier in a single fight, it’s important than Joshua fight with some intelligence and self-control.
“I’ve got to expose him [Martin]. “I’ve got to take him to waters he has never been in,” said Joshua to skysports.com He’s cool and calm so I’ve got to go in there and turn it into an aggressive, uncomfortable and unpredictable type of fight. That’s how I may rattle Martin.”
Oh my, Joshua sounds like he’s stuck on the same tune and get off of it no matter how hard you try to get him to change. That’s negative thing about fighters being put in with fodder at the start of their careers. Sometimes when you do that with a prospect, he won’t be able to adjust mentally and physically when he’s moved from fodder to quality all of a sudden.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kIYAab6RFtI
Prospects like Joshua pick up incredibly bad habits by fighting horrible opposition like the kind he’s been matched up against. I mean, think about it. Have you ever played tennis with someone that had no idea what they were doing on the court? It’s too easy to beat them, so you start getting sloppy playing them, because you try all kinds of crazy shots, and they’ll work because you’re playing someone who doesn’t have clue one.
If you play horrible opponents long enough, you go into shock when you play a halfway decent player that you used to be able to destroy. In other words, your skills have eroded because you’ve gotten sloppy with the horrible opposition you’ve been playing. I think that’s what we have here in Joshua. He was a better fighter in the amateur ranks seven years ago than he is now in my view.
If you look at video of Joshua in 2009, he looked worlds better than he is now. Part of the reason why Joshua has gone downhill is all that useless muscle he’s packed on in a hurry since he turned pro. Joshua has gone from 220 to 250 almost overnight. His training team should have gotten him off the weights right away and pointed out to him how it’s making him slow, robotic and immobile. Unfortunately, Joshua is going to have to find out the hard way that he put on too much muscle when he gets inside the ring with Martin on April 9, and gets worked over from the fast pace the American sets in the fight.
“I think he’s a cool, calm character and that shows in his boxing. That’s what I like about southpaws – they’re calm, collected and they punish you for your mistakes. That’s how he fights,” said Joshua. “He’s cool and calm so I’ve got to go in there and turn it into an aggressive, uncomfortable and unpredictable type of fight.”
Yeah, it sounds like Joshua has mind made up that he’s going to try and bum rush Martin in this fight, and see if he can throw him off into a state of chaos by fighting like a wild man against him. When will Joshua ever learn that he can’t fighting like a primitive now that he’s a professional fighter. I guess it’s going to take a knockout loss against Martin for Joshua to learn his lesson the hard way rather than the way way.
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