By Scott Gilfoid: IBF heavyweight champion Anthony Joshua got on his soapbox today to lecture WBC heavyweight champion Deontay “Bronze Bomber” Wilder (37-0, 36 KOs) about the level of his opposition he’s fighting. It seems that Joshua (18-0, 18 KOs) wants Wilder to raise the bar of the opponents he’s facing by taking on better fighters than the likes of #8 WBC Gerald Washington (18-0-1, 12 KOs), who he faces this Saturday night on February 25 on Premier Boxing Champions on Fox from the Legacy Arena in Birmingham, Alabama.
The Wilder-Washington fight will also be televised on Sky Sports in the UK. Washington, 34, is a replacement opponent for Wilder, as his previously scheduled challenger Andrzej Wawrzyk was replaced after he tested positive for a banned substance.
With little time to find a replacement, Wilder’s promoter was fortunate to find a good quality contender like Washington. This is a top 10 contender Wilder will be defending his World Boxing Council title against this Saturday on February 25. Washington is unbeaten and he’s just as big as Wilder at 6’7”.
“I think Wilder needs to fight better opposition,” Joshua said to skysports.com. “Washington is good, but he’s up and coming still. It was a last minute call-up as well.”
I rate Washington as a better heavyweight than anyone Joshua has faced up to this point in his 18-fight pro career. Joshua doesn’t have room to talk right now about Deontay needing to face better opposition. Joshua needs to fight better opposition. Joshua will be taking a step up of sorts on April 29 in facing 41-year-old Wladimir Klitschko, but even that fight isn’t a real step up. Wladimir is coming off of a 2-year layoff and a 12 round decision loss to Tyson Fury.
For the most part, Wladimir looked like a shot fighter who couldn’t pull the trigger on his punches any longer. That was 2 years ago. You’ve got to assume that Wladimir is possibly even worse off now in 2017. The thing is, Wladimir has looked really bad for 3 years since his fight against Bryant Jennings in 2014. If you look at the Wladimir vs. Jennings fight on Youtube, you can see that Wladimir couldn’t pull the trigger on his power shots.
When he did throw power shots, he missed most of the time. Jennings was right there in front of him, but Wladimir’s accuracy was gone. It looked like Wladimir was punching with his eyes closed. Of course, Wladimir didn’t have his eyes closed, but his accuracy was so terrible that it appeared that way. My only conclusion I could come to in watching how badly Wladimir looked was that he had gotten old overnight. That was three years ago. Now Wladimir is about to fight Joshua. I don’t like Wladimir’s chances of winning that fight. As such, I don’t see this as much of a step up for Joshua from his routine mismatches against the likes of Eric Molina, Charles Martin, Dominic Breazeale, Dillian Whyte, Gary Cornish, Kevin Johnson, Rafael Zumbano Love and Michael Sprott.
“I know his last opponent failed a drugs test unfortunately, but I would love for him to postpone it for another month and get someone who could train for a world championship fight,” said Joshua about Wilder’s fight on Saturday against Gerald Washington.
Deontay obviously isn’t going to postpone or cancel his fight against Washington. Wilder has to take this fight. He can’t cancel at the last second. Besides, this is kind of a semi-tune-up fight in a way for Deontay, because he’s coming off of a broken right hand and torn right bicep injury he suffered last April in his title defense against Chris Arreola. Those injuries required surgery to repair them.
A torn bicep is a pretty serious injury for a fighter, as is a broken hand. You have to come back from those types of injuries carefully otherwise you could suffer a setback. Frankly, I think Wilder is doing the right thing in facing Washington in his first fight since hurting his right arm. It’ll allow Wilder to see where he’s at with his right arm and hand. It’ll also let Wilder work on his boxing skills to fine tune them for bigger fights in 2017; one of which could be against the 6’6” Joshua.
Fighting a guy Washington’s size is the perfect match-up to get Wilder ready for facing Joshua, because both guys are pretty much of equal size. The 6’7” Washington is just a little taller than Joshua, but both fighters weigh the same at 250 lbs. It’s a smart move for Wilder to fight Washington to get him ready for Joshua. I don’t know if that bothers Joshua or not. I don’t know why it would. After all, Joshua is fighting the 6’7” Klitschko in his next fight. That’s a tune-up of sorts for Joshua to get him ready for the size of Wilder. Joshua isn’t going to admit that though, but you can call it a tune-up. It’s a fight that will get Joshua ready for the size of the 6’7” Wilder, but of course it’s not going to get him ready for what he’ll be facing when he gets inside the ring with the hard hitting American. Wilder is a much different fighter than Wladimir. Wilder actually throws power punches, and doesn’t just jab and grab like Wladimir.