By Harry Rowland: This Saturday 29th April, IBF Heavyweight champion Anthony Joshua 18-0 (18) defends against former unified champion Wladimir Klitschko 64-4 (53) at Wembley Stadium, London, England, in front of a sold out capacity, and post war record crowd of 90,000. Also on the table, the vacant WBA Super and slowly recognizable IBO titles.
Simply put, in the absence of lineal champion Tyson Fury, this is the most significant fight available in the Heavyweight division, determining who is number one. To add a twist, it is realistically the Ukrainian Klitschko that is defending the number one position (again, in the absence of Fury), despite his challenger status.
Neither Joshua, WBC champion Deontay Wilder or WBO champion Joseph Parker, can claim to be the number one Heavyweight, as none of them have beaten either Klitschko or Fury. They have merely picked up various pieces of a splintered championship.
The ever level headed Joshua realizes the enormity of the task at hand, rating his challenger in the top five heavyweights of all time. ‘He’s not as easy to hit as my last opponents, it’s about that now [pointing to his head], it’s about being smart’. When Klitschko was taking part in his first professional bout in 1996, Joshua would have just celebrated his 7th birthday the month before.
Former WBA, IBF, WBO and IBO champion Klitschko 41, is the senior statesman of Heavyweight boxing, unbeaten over a ten year reign, which was his second, and competing in a record total 28 championship fights, this being his 29th. He also holds the record for the most title defenses at 26, beating Joe Louis by one, although not consecutively as Louis did.
In contrast, Joshua 27, has competed in 44 professional rounds of boxing, having only completed 26 of them, a number less than half of his opponents tally of knockout wins. Both fighters are Olympic Super Heavyweight gold medalists, although again, Joshua managed it in just 43 amateur fights, to Klitschko’s 140.
The contrast in statistics goes on and on, which is what makes this contest so intriguing, it is the ultimate youth versus experience matchup. These fighters could not be more different, yet there are similarities; both Olympic champions, physically very similar at 6 foot 6 inches in height, scaling between 240-250lbs, an inch difference in reach, and at Joshua’s stage of Klitschko’s career he held an almost identical record of 18-0 (17).
Perhaps the most telling difference is that Klitschko has been where Joshua is today, and has learnt from mistakes Joshua is yet to make. If Klitschko fought the more aggressive younger version of himself now, he would likely win. But no two fighters are the same, despite how similar they may be on paper.
If experience is the key to victory then Klitschko wins hands down. Again looking at the statistics, Joshua’s opponents had a combined record of 387-130-10 to Klitschko’s 1,637-361-47, although the winning percentage difference between them is not too far off, at 73% to 80% respectively.
The main difference is that Joshua has only in his last four fights, started to dip his toe into the world class pool, and the lower level of it too. In retrospect his best win probably came against fellow Brit Dillian Whyte, who managed to rock him with a left hook early on. When you consider Whyte was most recently taken to the limit by now seven times beaten Derrick Chisora, who was easily handled by Fury, there is a case for concern.
Yet not too much can be made of comparisons such as this, most of boxings greats had wobbly moments on their journey to the top. It is all a learning curve, and as both fighters have said, there will never be a better moment for this fight to take place. Ticket sales alone attest this.
If Joshua’s’ victory over Whyte is his defining fight to this point, then what of Klitschko’s? This is a very difficult question to answer when having so many opponents to choose from, and before all of a fighters opponents have hung them up. But as it stands it has to be said Klitchsko lost his defining fight when soundly outpointed by Fury.
So what of a defining win? Klitschko has faced almost every top ten Heavyweight there has been in the last decade and a half, with the exception of his brother Vitali, yet it’s still a difficult choice. It is likely fellow Olympic champion Alexander Povetkin, who himself will struggle to be placed on anyone’s top 50 list of all time greats, let alone top 10.
Maybe the achievements of Ray Mercer, Chris Byrd, Samuel Peter, Sultan Ibragimov or David Haye surpass Povetkin’s? All Klitschko victims and have all staked a claim to a portion of the Heavyweight title at one time or another. There have been so many good wins on his journey, but none great.
Yet it can be argued that Klitschko deserves a spot in anyone’s top ten due to his consistency. It is not his fault that his defining moments have come when beyond his prime years. Three stoppage defeats in a career that has spanned beyond two decades work against him here.
So he finds himself looking for a career-defining win having just entered his 42nd year, against a man 14 years his junior. Combine this with a career long layoff of 17 months and it’s easy to see why the much more active Joshua is the 9-4 on favorite.
Along with youth, Joshua also possesses the advantage in speed, but the experienced Klitschko rightly points out the antidote to speed is timing. ‘Speed kills, you heard about it, but do you know what kills speed? Anticipation, you cannot buy anticipation, anticipation comes with time, fights, age’.
He also correctly points out that muscles, aggressiveness and a high energy style of a young lion like Joshua can be countered with a vast knowledge of the ‘sweet science’ of boxing itself, which he believes works in his advantage.
The challenger also dismisses any talk of home advantage playing a part, referring to ‘performance’ as the language of sports, citing his 1999 win against Axel Schulz in Schulz’s homeland of Germany for the vacant European title, in which he was booed up until he started to take over the fight, at which point the boos turned to cheers.
This is the first time Klitschko has been the underdog since he fought Samuel Peter in 2005. This is due to a few chinks in his armour being highlighted in recent fights, most notably in the loss to Fury. Had he not lost that fight by a few rounds he would likely be the favourite. So Fury set the blueprint and now Joshua is expected to follow it.
But Joshua couldn’t be more different to Fury. He is as big as Klitschko, but Fury’s advantage was being even bigger, notably in height at 6 foot 9. Fury was elusive, he boxed off the back foot to avoid trading with the harder punching champion. whereas Joshua has been compared to Frank Bruno, a powerful fighter that finds success when coming forward and planting his feet.
One of Fury’s best assets was being able to nullify Klitschko’s clinches with his size. So many opponents have found themselves gradually worn down by the grappling, leaning and forearms suffered on the few occasions they have managed to get in range. Victory for Joshua could hang in the balance of how he deals with this.
Despite Joshua’s relatively cautious approach in recent fights since the Whyte scare, he will be the agresser in the fight. Klitschko will want to keep the fight on the outside, using his jab to control the pace. He does not fight on the inside and has no interest in throwing to the body.
Joshua Needs to jab his way in before letting the heavy artillery go, setting a fast pace to throw Klitschko out of his comfort zone. A slower pace always suits the older man. Joshua has the strength to avoid Klitschko’s clinches and force him to throw with him. This is a dangerous strategy with both men becoming vulnerable, but one senses the chaos will suit Joshua’s style better.
Both are equal in power, but it is Joshua’s speed that will allow him to land first, if he can offset Klitschko’s timing using aggressive combinations. Klitschko has the faster footwork so it’s in the Londoners interest to bring the fight to the ex champion. If Klitschko has time to think, he will have access to the vast knowledge of experience in his possession.
I wouldn’t be surprised if we see a boxing clinic administered by the wiley old challenger, culminating in an embarrassing boxing lesson, and calls of ‘hype job’ after a one sided beating has been administered to the inexperienced champion. But I believe Joshua will prove too strong and too hungry for the old guard, and I see him securing another sensational knockout around the sixth round, perhaps after tasting the canvas himself in an entertaining spectacle.