By Jim Calfa: Jared Anderson is facing the still dangerous former IBF heavyweight champion Charles Martin tonight live in ESPN+ in front of his hometown fans at the Huntington Center in Toledo, Ohio.
The southpaw Martin (29-3-1, 26 KOs) is still a live dog and not someone Anderson can afford to take for granted on Saturday in their two-round main event fight. Martin’s only career defeats have come against Luis Ortiz, Adam Kownacki, and Anthony Joshua.
Anderson had been previously scheduled to face the hard-punching contender Zhan Kossobutskiy, but he had visa problems and couldn’t take the fight. It’ll be interesting to see how Jared deals with the change of opponent because he’s not getting a lot of time to prepare for Martin’s style.
Pegged as the future of U.S heavyweight boxing, Anderson (14-0, 14 KOs) is viewed as the guy that will soon take over the heavyweight division once Tyson Fury retires or ages out, which could be soon.
Anderson has looked impressive in his recent fights, steamrolling these fighters:
George Arias
Jerry Forrest
Miljan Rovcanin
Oleksandr Teslenko
Vladimir Tereshkin
Jeremiah Karpency
Kingsley Ibeh
Despite having 100% knockouts on his four-year pro record, Anderson doesn’t possess one-punch power like Deontay Wilder. Anderson is a combination puncher with good power who scores knockouts by an accumulation of punches landed.
There are positives & negatives involved with how Anderson fights. For him to score knockouts, he puts himself in harm’s way by standing in front of his opponents to unload his combinations.
This often results in Anderson getting tagged hard by his opponents, and he’s not had problems yet because he’s not faced anyone with huge power.
Anderson will need to be more careful this Saturday because Charles Martin is a knockout threat with tremendous strength in his left hand.
Top Rank promoter Bob Arum is high on the 23-year-old Jared, seeing him capable of soon capturing a world title. The only question is how soon Anderson will get to battle for a world title.
Given Jared’s friendship with Fury, whether he’ll want to fight him is questionable. Of course, if Fury captures all the titles by beating IBF, WBA & WBO heavyweight champion Oleksandr Usyk this December in Saudi Arabia and hangs around, defending the four belts for the next four to five years, Anderson will have no choice but to put friendship aside and face the 6’9″ Gypsy King.
Anderson can’t afford to wait around forever for Fury to sail off into the sunset before he battles for a world title.
