By Scott Gilfoid: Former WBC heavyweight champion Bermane Stiverne (25-2-1, 21 KOs) says his promoter Don King is already in negotiations for a fight between him and IBF heavyweight belt holder Anthony Joshua (17-0, 17 KOs) for a fight before the end of this year.
As such, the 37-year-old Stiverne has already started training camp for the fight with the 6’6” Joshua, who he believes is too muscular and stiff. Stiverne believes he’ll take advantage of Joshua’s inexperience and the fact that he’s not been getting hit back by his opponents.
“He’s too stiff with too much muscle. Not as smooth as a heavyweight should be,” said Stiverne to skysports.com. “When he fights somebody who punches back, who can take a punch and is smart in the ring, it will be a huge problem for him.”
There it is. Joshua is too stiff, too muscular and doesn’t have as much smooth muscle as he needs. I hate to say it, but I think Stiverne is right. Joshua is definitely too stiff, and his muscles are too tense. Those kinds of muscles fatigue quickly when they’re forced to move a lot to exert energy.
Joshua has been very lucky thus far to have been matched against a bunch of punching bags that don’t fight back rather than guys that jump on him and hit him in the head with shots. Take for instance Joshua’s last opponent Dominic Breazeale. He said he was going to fight back and make it a real dog fight. So what did he do?
Breazeale just covered up for seven rounds like a sparring partner and ended up getting knocked out in the 7th round. It looked to me like Breazeale was trying to tire Joshua out by absorbing his punches for as long as possible rather than trying to make it a fight. I mean, there are a right way and a wrong way to go about tiring out an over-muscled fighter like Joshua.
You can just cover up like a sparring partner and hope that he’ll eventually get tired of smashing you in the mouth or you can jump on him early and turn the fight into a war to tire him out. That’s obviously the best way to tire out a heavily muscled fighter. You’ve got to make them tired from round one by turning it into a fast pace type of fight. You’d be surprised how quickly a fighter will tire out when they’re carrying around 30 pounds of useless muscle on their frames. It doesn’t take seven to ten rounds to tire out a fighter that is heavily muscled. You can do it within two or three rounds if you force them to fight at a blistering pace.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-iNSI9TDye4
“I’m actually in camp right now,” said Stiverne. “Getting ready a little earlier will not hurt me – better to stay ready than to get ready when I get a call. [Joshua’s representatives] have been going back and forth with [promoter] Don King. The last conversation I had with Mr. King, I told him to make it happen.”
It’s so not surprising that Stiverne is getting the fight with Joshua, because Matchroom Sport promoter Barry Hearn recently said that he would like to match him up with Stiverne next.
I’m not sure if Stiverne resonates more as Joshua’s opponent than someone else like Luis Ortiz, but since it doesn’t appear that Matchroom has any interest in throwing Joshua in the ring with the talented Cuban right now, if ever, Stiverne is pretty much in the spotlight. I think he’s a heck of an upgrade from the recently guys that Matchroom has been feeding Joshua.