By Charles Brun: Trainer Dominic Ingle says Anthony Joshua is no longer a “superstar boxer” after his recent losses to Oleksandr Uysk and Andy Ruiz Jr.
Ingle feels that the reeling 33-year-old former two-time heavyweight champion Joshua (24-3, 22 KOs) is reeling career-wise after his three defeats in his last five contests, and he needs to “regroup” in a major way.
While Joshua’s promoter Eddie Hearn stubbornly resists the notion that AJ is retooling, saying to DAZN Boxing Show: “We’re NOT rebuilding here. I’m looking for momentum.”
Whatever way that Hearn wants to put it, the reality is Joshua is “rebuilding” his career, and if he doesn’t view it as such, he’s got his head in the ground and isn’t recognizing the dire situation that AJ is in right now.
I hate to say it, but the 2012 Olympic gold medalist Joshua is heading for skidrow, and there’s not much Hearn can do about it other than try and keep his ship above water by any possible means.
The only way Hearn can do that is by matching Joshua carefully, feeding him an hors d’oeuvre in April, and then matching him against the washed journeyman Dillian Whyte in the summer. Even then, Hearn is just stalling the inevitable for Joshua.
Once AJ is put back in with the main population in the division, he’s going to beat again, and we’ll be right back where we started from, with Hearn needing to rinse & repeat with more fodder for the rebuilding.
“Instead of thinking that he is this superstar boxer, because when you get beat, you are no longer that. You have to go back and regroup, not look for an easier way, to try and be where you are,” said Dominic Ingle to Boxing King Media about Anthony Joshua’s fall from grace.
“It is a bit disrespectful to Robert Garcia, and he might have a fight with his next trainer, and then go somewhere else.
“The first thing that Robert Garcia should have done, is kick anybody else out of the camp, who is trying to train Anthony Joshua,” said Ingle.
What Ingle appears to be talking about when he talks about what Robert Garcia should have done by kicking anybody else out of camp trying to train Joshua is Angel Fernandez.
That’s a guy Joshua had working alongside Robert Garcia while he was getting ready for his rematch with Usyk.
With Fernandez in camp and working the corner during the Joshua-Usyk II fight, it was unclear who the actual trainer was. That had to have been difficult for Robert to train Joshua with Fernandez right there as well. Who was the actual trainer?
If Joshua brings Angel Fernandez to work alongside his new coach, it seems a waste of time for him to be bothering to get a different trainer. Joshua might as well just let Angel train him and hope for the best.