By Scott Gilfoid: Unbeaten #13 IBF heavyweight contender Dominic Breazeale (17-0, 15 KOs) has knocked out 15 of his 17 opponents during his short four-year pro career. Only two fighters, Nagy Aguilera and Fred Kassi, have been able to go the distance with Breazeale. On June 25, Breazeale promises there will be red blood in the ring when he faces IBF heavyweight champion Anthony Joshua (16-0, 16 KOs), and I don’t think it’s his own blood that he has in mind.
Breazeale plans on giving Joshua a royal thrashing in the ring in front of his own 20,000 fans at the O2 Arena in London, England. There will also be a mess of fans watching the fight on Showtime Championship Boxing in the U.S and on Sky Box Office PPV in the UK.
“There’s going to be blood, man,” Breazeale said to skysports.com. “It’s two modern day gladiators going toe-to-toe fighting each other, beating each other. It’s going to be two big, goliath men on June 25. I know what two big devastating men can do in a ring. There’s no time to be nervous and not know that you’re confidently the bigger, better man.”
The 6’7” Breazeale has the size, reach, height, power and Olympic pedigree to make Joshua bleed in this fight. Breazeale injured his last opponent Amir Mansour with his mammoth punches, and forced a stoppage at the end of the 5th, when Mansour failed to come out for the 6th.
Mansour had success against Breazeale early in the contest in knocking him down in round three. However, when Breazeale started landing with maximum power from the outside in the 4th, he began to do damage to Mansour. Breazeale is one of those fighters that can destroy you when he gets the proper distance on his shots. Where he was making a mistake earlier in the fight in the first three rounds was throwing shots from too close to Mansour. Breazeale wasn’t able to land with his normal concussive power when he was beating smothered by Mansour.
The good news for Breazeale is that Joshua likes to fight on the outside too, so he won’t be trying to crowd him all night long like Mansour and Kassi both did. Those guys made it tough on the long-armed Breazeale by them working their way in close, and basically smothering the 2012 U.S Olympian with their shots.
We haven’t seen how Joshua deals with adversity since he turned pro three years ago. Joshua hasn’t been cut in a fight as of yet, and he’s had things mostly his own way other than when he was staggered in the 2nd round by Dillian Whyte in December last year. We do know that Joshua has had shoulder and back problems at different times during his pro career, but he’s experienced those issues in a real fight where he was dealing with someone that had the talent to beat him.
The question is will Joshua be able to fight at a high level when blood is dripping down from a cut eye and obscuring his vision? Will Joshua be able to fight with one eye blinded by his red blood? How will Joshua react when he suffers his first bloody and/or broken nose in a fight? Will the lack of oxygen slow him down to the point where he can’t throw his flurries? Will Joshua fight well with a busted lip or an injury inside of his mouth that causes blood to pour? The same questions apply to Breazeale.
We don’t know how either of these fighters are going to react when they see their own blood dripping from angry cuts around their eyes, and it’s going to be very, very interesting to see if they’ll be able to fight at a high enough level to pull out the victory. When the going gets tough, it separates the men from the boys. I think we’re going to find out on June 25 which of these two fighters is he tougher guy.
Breazeale, 30, is very confident of success because he’s seen Joshua’s fights, and spotted numerous flaws that he can exploit in this fight. Breazeale has a keen mind, and he’s already stored in his brain all the defects on the 26-year-old Joshua’s game that he can take advantage of in this fight.
It’s unclear whether Joshua has studied Breazeale enough to detect flaws in his game. It could be that Joshua will just go out and try and figure things out on the fly when he gets inside the ring with Breazeale.