By Scott Gilfoid: WBC heavyweight champion Deontay “Bronze Bomber” Wilder (37-0, 36 KOs) wants to take IBF heavyweight champion Anthony Joshua’s title from him in 2017 if the fight can get made. Wilder sees Joshua’s December 10th fight against #8 IBF Eric Molina (25-3, 19 KOs) as a prelude to a fight between the two of them in 2017.
Wilder is just hoping that the 26-year-old Joshua (17-0, 17 KOs) can get past the hard hitting 6’4” Molina, because the challenger will be coming into the ring to fight his heart out on December 10. Molina won’t be an easy out for Joshua, as he’ll be looking to bounce right hands off the chin of the British fighter, especially if he bum rushes him like he does against all of his opponents.
If Joshua runs into a right hand from Joshua, we could see a replay of his 2011 knockout loss to the hard hitting Romanian Mihai Nistor. Who can forget that fight? Nistor kept nailing Joshua with left hands each time he would charge him. After a while, it was almost embarrassing to watch, because Nistor was able to easily time Joshua’s attacks and nail him with straight lefts to the head each time he would attack.
Nistor went on the attack and staggered Joshua in the 3rd round. Luckily for Joshua, the referee stopped the contest before Nistor could finish him off. If the fight had gone longer, Nistor would have had a great chance of knocking Joshua out in the clinical sense.
“This is the build-up, if he is able to get the job done, to a unification fight,” Wilder said to skysports.com. “If he comes victorious, everyone wants to see him fight the man. And I am the man. No matter what people say, I am the man, especially in America.”
I wish I could say that we’ll be seeing a fight between Wilder and Joshua in 2017, but I can’t see that fight happening next year. Joshua’s promoter Eddie Hearn is very, very careful with the way that he’s been matching him. Joshua is Hearn’s flagship fighter in his Matchroom Sport stable, and I do not see him being willing to put his prize in the ring with a wrecking machine like Wilder. That’s a bad match-up for Joshua, because he has that bad habit of bum rushing his opponents.
If he does that against Wilder, he’ll wind up getting knocked to oblivion. I’m just saying. Joshua fights recklessly in his fights, and the only reasons why he gets away with that is because he’ been fighting dreadful opposition since he turned pro in 2013. The guys that Hearn has been matching Joshua up against in the pro level have been just awful.
I hate to say it, but the last time that Joshua fought a good heavyweight was way back in 2012, when he won a highly controversial decision in the finals of the London Olympics against 2008 Olympic gold medalist Roberto Cammarelle. Joshua was getting nailed over and over again in that fight, and it was pretty clear that Cammarelle was the better fighter of the two. However, the fight was in London, and the crowd was cheering like mad for Joshua. I had Cammarelle winning every round of the fight.
I wasn’t surprised that Joshua won the fight though, because I had already seen him winning three other controversial decisions in the same Olympics against Erislandy Savon, Zhang Zhilei and Ivan Dychko. By the time Joshua fought Cammarelle in the finals, I figured that there was no way that Joshua would lose that fight apart from a knockout, and I was right. He won despite getting pounded by Cammarelle.
“[Joshua’s upcoming fight] is good for the viewers of America. This fight will get a few more Americans on tune with who Joshua is,” said Wilder. “2017 will be a beautiful year. Our goal is to unify the division so we need others that want to put their title on the line.”
I think Molina is not a good choice to get the U.S boxing fans ready for a fight between Joshua and Wilder in 2017. The reason why Molina isn’t a good choice is because he’s not well known to the casual boxing fans in the States. You have to be a hardcore fan in the U.S to know who Molina is. He’s only been televised twice in the U.S as far as I can recall.
Molina was televised in his 1st round knockout loss to Chris Arreola in 2012, and then in 2015 in his 9th round knockout loss to Wilder on Premier Boxing Champions. That’s not enough for fans to know who Molina is. He’s not someone that is making news in the U.S. It’s too big of a country. For a fighter to become a big name in the States, you need to actually accomplish something like winning a world title. Even then, you’ve got to be a world champion for a while to become a big name in the U.S.
Molina is not known in the states by the casual fans, believe me. As such, Joshua isn’t going to accomplish anything at all in fighting Molina on Showtime Boxing on December 10. Joshua would need a MUCH better opponent for him to attract attention from the casual fans in the U.S, and Molina is not the guy. Honestly, the only guys that Joshua could attract the attention of the U.S fans would be Deontay or Wladimir Klitschko.
Apart from those two guys, there’s no one Joshua can fight to get the U.S casual fans interested in watching him fight. One negative that Joshua has working against him is he’s fighting on Showtime, which is a premium channel. To increase chances of his mismatch against Molina getting more visibility in the U.S, Joshua would need to fight on free television like NBC. Unfortunately, that’s not going to happen. Heck, even if the Joshua-Molina did get televised on free television like NBC, I doubt that fans would want to watch the fight, because they’ll likely have never heard of either guy.