SaadOffTheDeck wrote:Gotta favor aj, wilder has a chance with anyone. Deontay is awkward, vulnerable & deadly. That's why he's fun to watch. It's pretty easy to envision him beating or losing to virtually any decent heavyweight.
I'd swap the word "top" for "decent" but other than that I agree with every word. Stone me "Saad", that's a bit of an about-face isn't it? Were you on the road to Damascus or somewhere
caldo2025 wrote:
I think that the biggest factor comes down to WHEN this fight takes place. IMO Anthony Joshua is beatable right now and is rather ripe for the picking because he hasn't learned yet how to harness his energy and lacks the maturity inside the ring that comes with longevity and surrounding yourself with the best of the best. AJ could end up being an all time great fighter and he's just going to get better and better and better so now is the time for Wilder. In AJ's two toughest fights, he punched himself out and almost lost him the fights (Whyte/WK). In both fights, he found a way to win but Wilder is a closer and he has the energy that neither Whyte or WK had to close the show.
Wilder is as good as he's going to get right now. He's reached his ceiling. AJ hasn't even tapped into his talent reserves yet. He's going to develop all sorts of new tools along the way like Lennox did and just get better.
It all comes down to timing on this one.
I agree with all that too. I know pressure is building for AJ to forget Fury or whoever, and fight Wilder for the unified titles. Some thoughts on that:
1) Firstly I think having been through a war with Klitschko, AJ deserves to have a relatively easy defence. I'd like to see Ortiz get the chance while he can still get around unaided, but he represents a risk to the unification fight, although I'd favour AJ to beat him right now but not without another grueling struggle. It speaks volumes for Joshua that we can consider Pulev an easy defence, but that would be my choice because it satisfies one of his two mandatories and I don't see Pulev as having the power to trouble Anthony.
2) For the same reason (risk of missing the main unification fight) I'd give Parker a miss. Again I'd expect AJ to win but this doesn't go with my suggestion that Anthony deserves an easy defence.
3) Fury needs to get himself back in condition and have a warm up or three before seriously thinking about tackling Joshua. He is not in the picture right now.
4) Wilder is the option we are most looking forward to for sure, but it makes sense to let it mature from AJ's and Eddie Hearn's point of view while interest and speculation comes to the boil. As Caldo quite rightly says, the sooner it happens the better it is for Wilder so for Joshua it pays to wait.
Besides, why risk his three belts against the divisions hardest puncher, when he could enjoy the fruits of his labour attending to his mandatories thereby retaining his belts in relatively low risk fights, certainly in the case of Pulev, and probably Ortiz too if he would be willing to accept step-aside money while getting even older.
Before anyone of similar outlook to Nestor Gibbs (TBV) starts berating AJ for not rushing to sign for a unification with Deontay, just ask yourself "Is it fair to expect AJ to fight Klitschko and Wilder in back to back fights?".
Deontay has been WBC champ for two and a half years (and with the exception of Povetkin, who was taken out of the equation by Vada, Wada, or Rada or whatever the fork they call themselves, as soon as it became apparent he represented a clear and present danger to the USA's finest) he doesn't seem too overcome with an irrepressible urge to fight anyone with more than a 20% chance of beating him.
In fact at the risk of appearing cynical, I'm quite certain that if AJ were Nigerian rather than British of Nigerian parentage, with all the financial implications that would entail, then Deontay wouldn't be half as keen to meet him in a unification fight rather than Parker.
