By Scott Gilfoid: According to 41-year-old Wladimir Klitschko, he and Anthony Joshua are carbon copies of each other in a lot of different areas. He says they’re similar in the way they look size, skills and power. The difference that Wladimir sees is he’s “obsessed” with winning their April 29th fight at Wembley Stadium, and he believes that’s going to be the difference on the night.
Wladimir could do better if he stopped thinking about looking like Joshua and focused more on thinking of his game plan for winning the fight. Joshua was stopped by Mihai Nistor in 2011, and he wasn’t anything like Joshua in size or physique. Nistor was hardly body beautiful, and yet still dominated Joshua and stopped him. Nistor fought smart, and beat Joshua by fast combination punching. Poor Wladimir seems to have gotten off the beaten track in thinking in superficial terms in seeing only how much he looks like Joshua. It’s too bad because I think Wladimir has lost his way, and forgotten about needing a game plan to win the fight.
What we don’t know is how much Wladimir has left in the tank after 2 years out of action. Wladimir hasn’t fought since 2015 in a loss to Tyson Fury. Wladimir says it wasn’t his night in that fight. That may very well be, but it’s almost to imagine Joshua losing to Tyson Fury in the same manner.
If that wasn’t just a fluke thing for Wladimir to lose that fight, then he’s going to be in big trouble when he gets inside the ring with the 27-year-old Joshua. Looking like Joshua isn’t going to save Wladimir from getting knocked out. An older fighter can look physically good, but still be over-the-hill. Evander Holyfield looked physically good into his late 40s, and yet he was a shell of his former self. I think it might be the same situation with Wladimir.
“We look alike, size-wise. Arm length is pretty much the same,” Klitschko said to skysports.com. “Biceps? Maybe in this smaller T-shirt, you look better. Punching power, we don’t need to talk about. There are a lot of equal things; preparation, camp, altitude training, nutrition. We can name a lot of things. The more I look at it, it’s a copy. Different, but in a certain way it’s a copy.”
Wladimir probably can punch harder than Joshua, but that might not matter if he can’t take a punch himself. Wladimir’s hand speed appeared superior to Joshua the last time he fought against Tyson Fury in 2015. Wladimir had better speed and a stronger left hook and jab. The only thing that is a real question mark is how good Joshua’s chin is. We already know that Wladimir has a questionable chin. His chin has been exposed several times in his career in knockout losses to Ross Puritty, Lamon Brewster and Corrie Sanders. Those were good punchers, but Wladimir should have been able to take the punches that knocked him out in those fights. If Joshua is able to land one of his big shots, it could be over for Wladimir.
I don’t know about Joshua’s chin. He’s only been hit hard once in his career in getting clipped by a left hook from Dillian Whyte.
Whether Wladimir and Joshua are carbon copies of each other physically doesn’t really mean much. What does mean something is Wladimir’s ripe age, and his past tendency to fall apart when he gets hit hard. If Wladimir can’t take Joshua’s power long enough to land his own big power shots, then the fight is going to be over with quickly. That’s what the fight comes down to.
In his prime, Wladimir was probably a better fighter than Joshua could ever hope to be. Wladimir had a lot of training and a good amateur career. Joshua was more of a guy that won with size and power. He didn’t have a lot of amateur experience at the time that he won a controversial gold medal in the 2012 London Olympics. Wladimir clearly won his gold medal without controversy in 1996, as he outclassed all of his opposition. Joshua didn’t have the talent to do the same thing, as he struggled badly in bearing Ivan Dychko, Erislandy Savon and Roberto Cammarelle.
“I’m obsessed with my goal to raise my hands after the fight and leave the ring as the winner,” said Wladimir.
Every fighter has a limit of what they can achieve in the sport of boxing. Most of them are out of the sport by the time they hit their mid-30s. The fact that Wladimir is still fighting at the age of 41 is more of a product of his size, power and amateur background in boxing. There aren’t too many heavyweights with the physical tools that Wladimir has going for him in this day and age. The division has a few good heavyweights, but not like in the past when there were a lot of talented fighters.
Deontay Wilder is probably the best of the bunch, but he’s lacking experience. Joshua started his pro career with a lot of promise, but he seems to have gotten off track in packing on a bunch of body building muscle. I get the impression that Joshua’s head isn’t fully into boxing. He seems to be more of a weight lifter nowadays. I don’t know if Joshua can stay interested in boxing long enough not to mess up his body with his weight lifting. It might be too late for him because the muscles are now on Joshua’s body, and I can’t see him beating the good heavyweights with all that useless muscle.
A win for Wladimir over Joshua is going to be a big blow to British boxing, as well as major blow to his promoter Eddie Hearn. Joshua is the No.1 star in British boxing, and he’s not supposed to lose the fight to Wladimir. This is a fight that Joshua’s many fans from the UK are expecting him to win over Wladimir. If Joshua loses this fight, there’s going to be a lot of crocodile tears for his many boxing fans. I wonder if Hearn will still have Joshua’s fights on pay-per-view afterwards. How do you ask boxing fans to pay to see Joshua fight if he gets blasted apart by Wladimir? I’m just saying.