Wladimir Klitschko wants Anthony Joshua in March or April 2017

By Boxing News - 10/26/2016 - Comments

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By Scott Gilfoid: Former heavyweight champion Wladimir “Steel hammer” Klitschko (64-4, 53 KOs) says he’s not about to retire from boxing, and he’s very much interested in facing IBF heavyweight belt holder Anthony Joshua (17-0, 17 KOs) in March or April of 2017. The soon to be 41-year-old Klitschko thinks a fight between him and the 26-year-old Joshua will be the hugest fight at heavyweight in many years.

It’s a fight that would certainly give Wladimir and Joshua big paydays. However, it might under produce like the dud between Mike Tyson and Lennox Lewis in 2002. There was a TREMENDOUS amount of hype before that fight, even though Tyson was clearly no longer the fighter he’d been in the late 1980s. As such, it was a fight that was 15 years too late.

Lewis ended up stopping Tyson in the 8th round of a one-sided fight from start to finish. A prime Tyson would have likely destroyed Lewis in two or three rounds at best. The only thing the fight showed was that Tyson was WAY past his prime. I think it’ll be the same thing with the Joshua vs. Klitschko fight. If this match was taking place in 2007 or 2008, when Wladimir was at his best with trainer Emanuel Steward, Joshua wouldn’t stand a chance. But now that Wladimir is in his 40s, clearly not the same fighter he was 10 years ago, he’s now beatable.

So what we’re looking at right now is a repeat of the Lewis vs. Tyson fight, albeit without the incredible talent that those two heavyweights had. I see a lot of disappointed boxing fans at the outcome of the Joshua-Klitschko fight when it fails to produce a competitive fight.

Yeah, Joshua’s fans will be happy to see him blast Wladimir to smithereens, but for fans who wanted to see a competitive fight, they don’t see it. Wladimir showed in his last two fights against Tyson Fury and Bryant Jennings that he’s no longer a force in the heavyweight division.

The only thing that his fight with Joshua will prove is what Gilfoid already knows with Wladimir no longer good enough to beat the top heavyweights in the division. We’d see Wladimir lose if he fought a bunch of other heavyweights in the division in my view.

Unfortunately, I think Wladimir will retire after he loses to Joshua, so we won’t get a chance to see how far gone he is with him taking on – and losing – to Deontay Wilder, Luis Ortiz and Joseph Parker. Getting beaten by those guys will take the shine off of a Joshua victory over Wladimir in March or April.

Wladimir said this to the German news site Bild:

“I’ve never thought about stopping, not once, after the defeat and losing my belts,” Klitschko said. “As long as I can perform in the ring, am fit and motivated, I’ll keep going. I want to box in March or April against IBF world champion Anthony Joshua. That’ll be the biggest heavyweight fight for years and hopefully it’ll be for three titles. There will be a couple of big, spectacular fights with me in the ring.”

I don’t agree with Wladimir about him having “a couple of big spectacular fights with me in the ring.” I think Wladimir left his last spectacular fight in the rearview mirror two years ago with his 5th round knockout win over Kubrat Pulev in 2014. That was a fight in which Pulev seemed to shake Wladimir up with a hard jab early in the fight.

Wladimir responded by knocking Pulev down repeatedly until stopping him in the 5th. However, Wladimir was not the same fighter when he returned to the ring five months later in his fight against Bryant Jennings in April 2015. Wladimir suddenly looked like he’d lost his timing, coordination and the last bit of his youth. To me, Wladimir looked older and not the same fighter he’d been in the Pulev fight.

I’ve seen people age dramatically in just one year’s time, and I think Wladimir was one of them. In his case, it was just six months. Since the Jennings fight, Wladimir no longer looks to be a top level fighter. We saw that in his 12 round decision loss to Tyson Fury last November. Wladimir couldn’t pull the trigger on his shots. When he did throw punches, he missed badly, as his hand-eye coordination and accuracy looked shot.

Joshua is expected to fight 34-year-old Eric Molina on December 10 at the Manchester Arena in Manchester, England. Why fight Molina? It’s pretty obvious to Gilfoid why Joshua will fight a soft touch like Molina. It’s because he brings the least amount of threat to beating him. Joshua’s wily promoter Eddie Hearn isn’t going to risk messing up the big money Klitschko fight that is just around the corner in 2017 by putting him in with a live body that could potentially beat him with a big shot to the head.

We’ve seen Joshua already shaken up by Dillian Whyte at the pro level. We’ve seen Joshua get stopped as an amateur. I don’t think Hearn wants to risk losing that pot of gold that awaits Joshua next year. As such, Hearn is going to go with Molina as Joshua’s opponent. For the boxing fans that may have forgotten, Molina was the guy that Deontay Wilder dropped three times in the process of knocking him out in the 9th round in June 2015. Molina is the fighter that Chris Arreola knocked out in one round in 2012.

The only thing Molina has going for him, besides having been knocked out by Wilder and Arreola, is his recent 10th round knockout victory over 40-year-old former two division world champion Tomasz Adamek last April in Krakow, Poland. Before you get all excited about that fight, you need to realize that Molina was LOSING the fight to Adamek on all three of the judges’ scorecards at the time of the stoppage. It wasn’t a situation where Adamek was on his way to winning a hometown decision.

Adamek was simply the better fighter until Molina suddenly started throwing bombs in the 10th. I think that surprised Adamek more than anything, because he simply wasn’t ready for the sudden change in Molina’s game. He’d been a passive fighter through the first nine rounds. In the 10th, Molina looked like a completely different fighter.