By Scott Gilfoid: IBF heavyweight champion Charles Martin (23-0-1, 21 KOs) thinks the heavily muscled challenger Anthony Joshua (15-0, 15 KOs) had better be using this training camp to whittle down his bulky muscles on his frame, because he’s going to wear down with them when he faces Martin on April 9 at the O2 Arena in London, UK.
Martin says Joshua is top heavy with skinny legs. Those muscles are going to cause Joshua to wear down in the second half of the fight right when Martin is going up.
I really don’t think Joshua is following Martin’s advice to reduce the size of his muscles. In training video I’ve seen, it looks like Joshua is focusing on resistance exercises like usual, and he looks like an NFL linebacker with pads on.
This is bad for Joshua because if Martin pushes a fast pace and forces him into the second half of the fight, then we could see Joshua fighting on fumes and ready to keel over. The key point that Martin will need to remember is that he’s got to fight at a fast pace and make Joshua fight the full three minutes of each round. It has to be hectic fighting, because that’s the type of style that wears him down like an old clock.
“He’s got big muscles and he’s going to get tired,” said Martin. “This whole camp better be him trying to lean up because with all those muscles, he’ll be tired. When he’s going down, I’m going up. I get stronger as the rounds go.”
For Joshua to fade out in the second half of the fight, Martin is going to need to be able to still be there fighting hard and setting a fast pace. It won’t be any good if Martin makes the mistake of backing up to the ropes and playing sparring partner/possum likely made of Joshua’s gawd awful opponents have done since he turned pro.
Joshua does well against fighters that have no sense and think they can wear him out by playing rope-a-dope on him. Even Joshua doesn’t land anything other than arm punches when he has an opponent backed up against the ropes, the referees in the UK have been quickly stopping his fights just based on him throwing flurries.
I firmly believe those fights shouldn’t have been stopped because his opponents in many cases didn’t look all that hurt. They just appeared to be waiting for him to stop throwing punches so that they could get their chance to throw shots. But that’s why it’s such a really dumb idea to back up against the ropes against Joshua, because he’ll throw a flurry of shots and the referee will step in and stop the fight regardless of his opponent still being on his feet waiting for Joshua to stop throwing.
🎥 Behind The Ropes at the 02 🎬 pic.twitter.com/WqR1zCbljA
— Anthony Joshua (@anthonyfjoshua) March 19, 2016
“I’m skillful enough and hard-hitting enough,” said Joshua. “He won’t see the knockout coming. You catch them guys with the shots they don’t see and that’s what knocks them out. I’m a counter puncher.”
Being a big counter puncher definitely helps Martin in a huge way, because he’s going to have plenty of opportunities to land his counter shots against Joshua, especially if he chooses to bum rush him and just mindlessly throw shots. Joshua seems to have a bully mindset due to all the mismatches he’s been in and because of his size. I mean, if you take Joshua’s size away from him and make him 6’2” 225lbs, and then put him in with high caliber opposition, I think we’d see a different mindset from Joshua. He couldn’t just bum rush his opponents the way he’s been doing because he would be staggering around the ring like the town drunk on Saturday night if he fought like that.
Heck, Joshua is going to have major problems fighting the way he does when he gets in with Martin on April 9. Joshua’s size is more football size with useless muscle that doesn’t translate to power. It’s weird how being muscular doesn’t always translate to power. Mike Tyson was one of the rare muscular guys that could punch, and that was because he had hand speed. But the guys that can really punch are the tall, lean fighters like the 6’7”, 229 pound Deontay Wilder.
The 245lb Joshua outweighs Deontay by 15 pounds, and yet Deontay is by far the bigger puncher with much better hand speed. Deontay has better power than Joshua in either hand, and far superior hand speed if I do say so myself. The same thing with Charles Martin. He’s the bigger puncher than Joshua with the better hand speed, and he doesn’t have Joshua’s bodybuilding frame.
You see what I mean? You have to understand; Martin was made to throw punches. He was throwing punches with mean intentions as a child just playing around with friends. The guy was made to throw great shots, and he didn’t have to possess tons of useless muscles to generate power. Martin gets his power from his frame, and he just has huge power. Look at the knockout artists of the past. Julian Jackson and Thomas Hearns weren’t hugely muscled fighters, and yet they still punched with tremendous power like Martin and Deontay. I’m just saying.
Martin is right. Joshua needs to use this training camp to burn off all that useless muscle that he’s put on since he left the amateur ranks many moons ago and get back to the 220s that he was fighting when he was in the Olympics. I think Joshua was a much better fighter even before he went to the Olympics. If you look at footage from Joshua’s fight against Dillian Whyte in 2009, he was a lot faster than and was able to throw nonstop punches. Joshua was only 220 at 6’6″, and he still looked hugely muscled for that weight. I don’t know how Joshua had added 30 pounds of muscles since then, because it looks like weightlifting muscles that he’s put on rather than the type of muscles that helps you out in a fight.
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