By Scott Gilfoid: IBF heavyweight champion Charles Martin (23-0-1, 21 KOs) has no doubts in his mind that he’s going to be knocking out British challenger Anthony Joshua (15-0, 15 KOs) in less than a month from now on April 9.
Martin feels that he’s got the punching power, talent and the experience to blast the 26-year-old Joshua out in front of the sold out crowd at the O2 Arena in London, England. The Joshua vs. Martin fight will be televised on Sky Box Office pay-per-view, which means the huge 6’5” Martin will be getting a nice little payday in this fight.
Joshua, 6’6”, has the hometown advantage in this match-up, but Martin plans on taking the fans – and the judges – out of the fight by blasting Joshua to smithereens. The southpaw Martin, 29, wants to leave absolutely no doubts who the better fighter is when he gets inside the ring on April 9. He’s going to jump on Joshua, throw fast punches, and get him out of there quickly.
“’I let these talk for me. No doubts, see you April 9. I will win. I will knock him out,” Martin said via skysports.com. “It ain’t going 12 rounds, heavyweights ain’t supposed to go 12 rounds.”
I don’t see how the Martin-Joshua fight can go 12 rounds. With the way that Joshua fights, which is pretty sloppy and quite rudimentary, I think this fight is going to end in the first three rounds. If Joshua fights Martin like he did against Dillian Whyte last December, then this is going to be an easy one for Martin.
Joshua went straight at Whyte in the first two rounds of that fight and wound up getting staggered in the second. Perhaps it was fate that Whyte came into the fight with an injured left shoulder, which he further injured in the 2nd round. Whatever the case, it enabled Joshua to survive the second round, and continue on to win the fight.
Whyte was pretty much done for the night after the 2nd round, because he reinjured his left shoulder in that round and couldn’t generate any power with his left after that. The important thing is if Joshua fights like that against Martin, he’s going to get nailed repeatedly with Martin’s accurate shots and get taken out QUICK.
If you look at Martin’s fights, the one thing that jumps out at you is how deadly accurate he is. Martin never misses with his punches seemingly. He’s incredibly accurate that it’s not even funny. The other thing that you notice right off the bat is Martin’s impressive punching power. No, he’s not a puncher like Deontay Wilder, but his accuracy and southpaw stance makes him almost as lethal.
When you’re getting hit by shots that you’re not expecting, it makes a fighter’s power much more lethal. Martin is a great counter puncher among other things, and his accuracy puts his opponents in a position where they’re constantly getting hit with big shots that they’re just not prepared for. Martin has got to be one of the most dangerous heavyweights you can face. He’s like a young George Foreman, except he doesn’t miss with his shots the way that a young Foreman did earlier in his career.
“Probably not, nah not when we’re in the ring, it ain’t going the distance,” Joshua said.
The problem that Joshua has, besides not being able to get a lot of speed and explosiveness into his shots, is he’s a one-trick pony. He only knows how to fight in one style, and that’s by coming straight ahead and trying to bomb out his opposition. As you saw in the amateur ranks, Joshua struggled badly with his fighting style when he met up against the best fighters. He would get beat, or he won controversial decisions. He did not look good. Instead of learning back then that he needed to adapt and develop his defensive side of his game, Joshua continued to fancy himself a slugger.
Unfortunately for Joshua, he doesn’t have the speed, power, explosiveness or the flexibility to be a great slugger. When you look at sluggers, you think of Deontay. He’s got the whole package – speed, explosiveness, power, flexibility and raw talent. Joshua is more of a Foreman type of fighter, but the Foreman that was in his 40s rather than the younger one. Foreman’s hand speed had slowed down when he came after a 10-year-old layoff. He was never fast to begin with, but when Foreman came back, he was very slow with his shots. He still had good power, but he had to bludgeon his mostly stationary opposition into submission. Foreman did good against certain type of opposition, but struggled against the more mobile fighters.
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