By Scott Gilfoid: Anthony Joshua is working hard in the gym in trying to improve his mobility and head movement to get ready for his rematch with Andy Ruiz Jr. later this year. Joshua’s promoter Eddie Hearn will be deciding on the date and the venue for the Joshua-Ruiz rematch this week.
In looking at some footage of Joshua’s workouts this week, he’s got a long ways to go. He’s just too big, and his legs can’t move all that useless bulk quickly enough to elude someone with a quick straight-ahead attacking style that Ruiz possesses. Joshua is like a big refrigerator with arms. You’re not going to move a big object like that around the ring. AJ is built more for attacking his opponents in a straight line rather than moving laterally or backwards. You hate to say it, but it looks like a lost cause. Joshua would be better spent using his time working on his dreadful cardio rather than trying to fix what can’t be fixed.
AJ wants to avenge loss to Ruiz
AJ wants to avenge his humiliating seventh round knockout defeat that he suffered at the hands of the 29-year-old Ruiz Jr. earlier this month on June 1 at Madison Square Garden in New York. Joshua’s promoter Eddie Hearn of Matchroom Boxing picked Ruiz Jr. from the bottom of the rankings, thinking that he was an ideal replacement opponent to take the place of Jarrell ‘Big Baby’ Miller. The move blew up in Hearn’s face when Ruiz destroyed Joshua in seven rounds.
Joshua’s decision to face Ruiz in an immediate rematch means that he has very little time to improve his mobility. We’re talking four months. That’s not a lot of time for a fighter like Joshua to make the dramatic improvements with his poor foot speed.
Late in the game for Joshua to be working on mobility
By this point in Joshua’s career, he should have already worked on his mobility a long time ago. He’s 29-years-old, and he’s built like an NFL tight end. Joshua’s heavily muscled physique isn’t designed for movement. That doesn’t necessarily mean that Joshua can make small improvements in his ability to move around the ring, but he’s not going to become fleet of foot at this stage of his career. It’s too late.
What Joshua needs to do is drop 30 pounds of useless muscle, and get back down to the low 220s. That’s his best and only hope.
Haye: Joshua should take rematch only if he knows why he lost
- “The fact they are talking about an immediate rematch, I hope they are not just doing it for PR sake. I hope they are doing it because they truly know that it was a freak thing that happened and he’ll be better,” said Haye to Sky Sports in talking about Joshua.
The perception is Joshua is taking the rematch with Ruiz due to ego and just plane stubbornness. Joshua isn’t looking at this fight in a logical manner. All that has gone out the window due to his single-minded need to undo what has already been done with him being badly exposed by Ruiz Jr. Joshua is the perfect example of what happens when a fighter gets too big for his britches. He stops listening to people, and thinks he knows better. If Joshua was just a regular guy without all the money, and the gold medal from the 2012 Olympics, he would probably listen to people in the boxing world and wait a while before taking the rematch. Unfortunately, Joshua is beyond listening. He’s had too much early success, and made too much money for him to listen to people. Joshua is heading for a big fall.
Haye says Joshua wins if he works hard in training camp
- “Was he paying the price in training? Only he knows and if he wasn’t, that’s a good thing, because all you need to do is pay the price and he should win,” said Haye.
So basically Haye is saying that Joshua lost to Ruiz because he wasn’t physically prepared for the fight. I don’t know if that’s the case. It looked more like Ruiz Jr. was superior to Joshua in every facet of the game, and had the better physical skills. Ruiz’s boxing ability was clearly superior to Joshua’s talent. He might not have looked as good as Joshua in terms of his physique, but his skills were light years better. Ruiz’s hand speed, mobility stamina and punch resistance were far better than Joshua’s.
Is Hearn enabling Joshua by blaming his loss on him getting hurt in round three
It’s interesting how Hearn blamed Joshua’s loss on him getting clipped by a left hook from Ruiz in the third round. Hearn feels that Joshua would have won the fight if he didn’t get hit hard by Ruiz in the third. This writer doesn’t see that as the case. Ruiz hadn’t even started attacking Joshua going into the third round. Once Joshua knocked Ruiz down, that woke the California native up. It was like a light switch being turned on in Ruiz’s head. He went after Joshua in a way that he hadn’t done in the first two rounds of the contest. The fight was basically over with once Ruiz turned it up a notch. Joshua might as well have hoisted up the white flag of surrender, because he was no match for Ruiz.
Joshua was out-manned in every way a fighter could be. If this was a battle in a war zone, Joshua would have been routed. It wasn’t even close. Joshua looked like he was only prepared physically to fight hard for one round, and after that, he gassed out and was done for the evening.
