Gary Cornish: I’m confident I can stop Anthony Joshua

By Boxing News - 09/08/2015 - Comments

joshua66By Scott Gilfoid: Unbeaten heavyweight Gary Cornish (21-0, 12 KOs) says he plans on going out there on Saturday night on September 12th and out-boxing and stopping #2 WBC Anthony Joshua (13-0, 13 KOs) in that order to win the vacant Commonwealth heavyweight title at the O2 Arena in London, England.

Cornish, 28, and his team must see something in the heavily muscled Joshua’s fighting style that he believes he can take advantage of for him to out-box him and score a knockout. I don’t see anything in Cornish’s own game that would suggest that he’ll be able to win this fight, but who knows?

Maybe he’s developed his jab and found some power somewhere that he’s been hiding in his previous 21 fights.

“I’m not going to give anything away on what we are going to do – but I will surprise people on the night,” Cornish said via skysports.com. “I’m there to have a fight with Joshua and I’m confident I can outbox him and I can stop him.”

So there it is. Cornish has a plan and he’s not going to spill his guts about what that plan is. But whatever the scheme is, Cornish thinks he’s going to wind up with a knockout win after out-boxing the 6’6” Joshua first. I can see Joshua getting out-boxed by a heavyweight with some talent, but the problem is I don’t see Cornish as a talented fighter.

I see him as a 3rd tier fodder type of guy, the type that Joshua’s promoter Eddie Hearn has been continually digging up for him to blast out since he turned pro in 2013. Hearn has been focusing on the lower level weak heavyweights to put in with Joshua rather than match him up against fringe contenders in the 1st tier, which is what Hearn should probably have been doing all this time considering that Joshua did win the gold medal in the London Olympics in 2012.

Yeah, it was a controversial gold medal with many boxing fans thinking that Joshua was beaten at least twice by Roberto Cammarelle and Erislandy Savon, but Joshua still technically was given the medal in front of his adoring fans in London.

“I respect him but we will be victorious,” Cornish said about Joshua.

It sounds like Cornish is having a pipe dream to me. I don’t see him beating Joshua, and I don’t see him making it out of the 1st round of the fight. Cornish is too slow and his jab is too weak to be used to keep Joshua off of him. Further, Cornish doesn’t have any punching power, so I see it ending badly for him. The end result of a fighter like Cornish messing around with a hungry fighter like Joshua is a bad 1st round knockout loss for Cornish.

A much more interesting fight is on the undercard between unbeaten heavyweight talent Dillian Whyte (15-0, 12 KOs) taking on the highly experienced Brian Minto (41-9, 26 KOs) in a 10 round contest for the vacant WBC International Silver heavyweight title. I think this is going to be an exciting fight where Whyte will be able to show off his punching power and talent for the fans.

Most of the other fighters that Whyte has fought have collapsed to the canvas almost immediately upon tasting his power. Minto likely won’t drop for the 10 count the first time he’s nailed with a heavy shot. I mean, I do think that Minto will lose this fight by knockout, but at least he’ll be able to go some rounds before he bites the dust. It’ll just be thrilling to see Whyte work against a heavyweight who has a good chin and can stand up to his early bombardment.



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