By Scott Gilfoid: In 24 days from now, unbeaten Anthony Joshua (15-0, 15 KOs) will be fighting for a world title against the talented and hard hitting IBF heavyweight champion Charles Martin (23-0-1, 21 KOs) on April 9 on Sky Box Office at the O2 Arena in London, UK.
Joshua, 26, has been training hard to develop his muscles with the belief that they will help him win the fight against the 6’5” Martin. That’s mistake number. You don’t train muscles when you’re are trying to beat a highly skilled southpaw like Martin. On the contrary, you need to strip off muscles and try and become as fast as humanely possible, especially if your name is Joshua. He’s already incredibly slow with his punching style, and he doesn’t have a finesse approach to fighting.
In other words, Joshua just goes straight at his opponents hoping that he can overpower them. In the Olympics, this approach failed for Joshua because three of his four opponents got the better of him when he was fighting that way, even though he was given controversial wins in all three of those fights.
Power – The power is pretty much equal with Martin and Joshua. But since Martin throws straight shots with great speed from the southpaw stance, I would have to give him the advantage in the power department. There’s no element of surprise for Joshua because he fights out of the orthodox stance.
Speed – The speed advantage goes to Martin. He’s clearly faster than Joshua, but that’s mainly because he doesn’t have a ton of muscles slowing him down the way Joshua has. Martin focuses exclusively on working on his speed rather than on adding muscles. As such, he doesn’t have anything that is going to keep him from throwing his shots with blistering speed on April 9. Martin also doesn’t have anything that will keep him from tiring him out. His body is made for throwing punches, and he’s not going to gas out after two or three rounds because he’s hauling around excess muscle.
Experience – Martin clearly has the advantage in this department. He has more fights under his best as a pro, and he’s been fighting better opposition. You can blame Joshua’s promoter Eddie Hearn for him not having better experience against quality opposition because Hearn has been spoon feeding him soft jobs since he turned pro.
Agility – Again, this is another area where you have to give it to Martin. He’s the much nimbler fighter on his feet. Martin moves more like a featherweight than a heavyweight. He’s very light on his feet, and moves more like a dancer than a heavyweight. The reason why Martin moves so well is he’s not weighed down by a lot of muscle. The guys body is made for throwing punches, period. Martin has the kind of body that will enable him to still be moving well even in his 40s if he’s still fighting at that point in his career.
Planted feet – Rotational Power 🌪👊🏾 pic.twitter.com/rfdA24yDQC
— Anthony Joshua (@anthonyfjoshua) March 16, 2016
Punch resistance – We don’t really know how good Martin’s punch resistance is because he rarely gets hit. He’s usually the one that’s doing the hitting. We do know a little about Joshua’s punch resistance from his fight against Dillian Whyte last December. Joshua was staggered early in his fight by Whyte in the 2nd round. If not for Whyte aggravating his previously injured left shoulder, he would have finished Joshua off in that round.
Prediction I wish I could say that Joshua is going to win the fight, but I can’t see where he’ll able to pull off the win. I mean, the only thing that Joshua has going for him in this fight is the hometown advantage. We saw how the hometown advantage worked for Joshua in the 2012 London Olympics with him fighting in front of large pro-Joshua crowds in each of his fights. However, I don’t think the Martin fight is going to go to the judges, so I don’t see this going the decision route. I believe that Martin is going to come quickly and catch a sloppy Joshua with a straight left hand while he’s rushing forward in a mindless way and he’ll get planted on the canvas. I think a badly hurt Joshua will stumble to his feet to resume fighting, but I see Martin finishing him off with straight and highly accurate left hands to the head.
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