By Scott Gilfoid: David Price says he’s ready to step in and knockout IBF heavyweight champion Anthony Joshua on December 10 in his next fight at the Manchester Arena in Manchester, England. Joshua was hoping to fight former world champion Wladimir Klitschko on that date, but the fight remains in doubt given that the World Boxing Association hasn’t yet decided whether to sanction the Klitschko vs. Price fight as of yet.
We’re waiting to see if they will. The WBA was supposed to make their decision on Thursday, but they still haven’t said anything. It doesn’t look like it matters though, because it appears that Klitschko and former WBA heavyweight champion Lucas “Big Daddy” Browne will be facing each other on December 10 for the vacant WBA title in Hamburg, Germany.
That’s a good fight for both guys, and it gives the 40-year-old Wladimir a chance to capture the WBA title and use it as leverage to get a bigger cut of the revenue for a unification match against Joshua in 2017.
Joshua’s promoter Eddie Hearn hasn’t said whether he would be interested in matching him against #11 WBO, #12 IBF Price (21-3, 18 KOs) on December 10 or not. Price, 33, has won his last two fights against Ivica Pacurin and Vaclav Pejsar since losing to Erkan Teper by a 2nd round knockout last year in July 2015.
“I’m coming to knock you out December 10 done it before and I’ll do it again,” said Price on his Twitter account.
It would be a risk on Joshua’s part if he gook on the 6’8” Price for his next fight, because if the fight turned out to be a total slaughter with him destroying him, then the boxing fans would be angry. The fans want to see competitive matches, not fights in which one guy like Price gets knocked out almost immediately.
If Price could show that his chin has improved since his knockout loss to Teper, then it wouldn’t be so bad. The fans would believe him. However, Price hasn’t beaten a live body recently, and he’s never actually beaten a good fighter before in his career. That’s the problem. If you throw Price in with Joshua, and the fight turns out to be a sick mismatch, then who will take the criticism over it? You guessed it. Joshua and Hearn will take the heat from the fans.
Joshua’s promoter Eddie Hearn is looking at other options for his fight on December 10. The fact that Price hasn’t been contacted yet suggests that he’s not interested in him as the guy to replace Wladimir for that fight date. What Price has going against him is the fact that he’s been knocked out three times I the last three years in knockout loses to Tony Thompson [x 2] and Erkan Teper.
If Price had come back from the loss to Teper to beat one or two good fighters, then you could argue that he would be a good option for Joshua to fight on December 10. Those loses hurt Price’s career in a big way. Price did come back recently to pick up a couple of wins, but they were against obscure 2nd tier fodder opponents. As such, it’s not surprising that Hearn hasn’t contacted him as a substitute to face Joshua on December 10.
When Price talks about having knocked Joshua out in the past, he’s referring to a sparring session that the two fighters supposedly had in the past in which Price hurt Joshua during the session. It was a long time ago, and you can’t really take too much from a sparring session. Sparring isn’t the same thing as fighting.
There’s a lot more pressure during real fights and fighters take things seriously. If Price really did KO Joshua in sparring, it probably meant that Joshua wasn’t going all out at the time that he got hurt. It might have been a situation of Price being too experienced at the time compared to now.
“Nothing’s been mentioned to us about a fight with AJ, and it’s gone a bit quiet because of probably what is going on but maybe Eddie Hearn has got someone as a back-up,” said trainer David Coldwell to skysports.com. “But I’ve said all along, if he comes knocking then of course Pricey would take the opportunity. I’ve said before if something comes along and landed in his lap, like fighting AJ, yes, we’d take it.”
It’s thought that Hearn might try and get former world title challenger Kubrat Pulev or Joshua to fight if they can get him to agree to the money. Pulev might price himself out of the fight, however. If that’s the case, then that would bad news for Joshua. They don’t have a lot of time to negotiate a fight with any one fighter.
If they can’t get an opponent nailed down quickly, then they’ll need to move on, because they’re not going to risk losing the December 10 fight date on Sky. Besides Price and Pulev, other possibilities for Joshua are guys like Johann Duhaupas, Dereck Chisora, Eric Molina, Carlos Takam, Hughie Fury and Dillian Whyte. Sadly, those are the best of the bunch. There’s just no one out there right now unless Hearn wants to take a big risk by getting the talented American Jarrell Miller to step in and take the fight.
The 6’4”, 285lb Miller is a huge puncher with a lot of size. It would be a really hard fight for Joshua to handle that because Miller has the kind of punching power that would be a real nightmare for him. I don’t think Hearn would want to risk Joshua’s uneaten record by putting him in with Miller, because he can really punch, and he’d be firing back bombs from the moment the fight started. Joshua would need to focus more on his boxing skills in that fight rather than on his slugging, because if he tried to fight a war with Miller, it could end really badly for him.
“You can’t turn down opportunities like world titles – as long as the terms are right. However if it’s not then you have to build towards something. Therefore I want him active, get him out again as quickly as possible,” said Coldwell about Price.