Wilder expects Eric Molina to give Joshua problems

BoxingNews.com

By Scott Gilfoid:WBC heavyweight champion Deontay Wilder expects former world title challenger Eric Molina (25-3, 19 KOs) to potentially give IBF heavyweight title holder Anthony Joshua (17-0, 17 KOs) problems in their fight on December 10 at the Manchester Arena in Manchester, England.

Wilder thinks that Molina’s heart and determination to win will make him fight harder. Molina will take more shots in this fight in order to try and win. He’ll land more shots. Joshua will need to be able to take some punches for a change, because the guys he’s been fighting haven’t been throwing punches.

They’ve been just standing around looking too timid to let their hands go. The last time Joshua fought guys that threw punches back at him was in the 2012 Olympics, when he won one controversial fight after another against guys that appeared to get the better of him.

Unfortunately, many of those high caliber heavyweights didn’t turn pro otherwise they might be the ones facing Joshua instead Molina.

“Molina will be a challenge for him,” Wilder said to skysports.com. “He’ll come and try to fight, that’s for sure, and that’s what people don’t understand. It’s not about who he is, or what his record is. It’s about what he is, and what he stands for, right now.”

If Molina doesn’t stand around waiting until the 10th round to start letting his hands go, he might have a chance of beating Joshua. In the 34-year-old Molina’s last fight against Tomasz Adamek, he did nothing for the first nine rounds. It wasn’t until the 10th round that he started throwing right hands with a vengeance.

It was so sudden that Adamek wasn’t ready for the transformation that Molina did in that round. Molina kept nailing Adamek with huge shots to the head, and he wasn’t prepared to get hit that hard late in the fight. For Molina to beat Joshua, he’s going to need to attack him right off the bat, because Joshua will be trying to KO him in the 1st round like he does all of his opponents. Joshua is so utterly predictable that it’s not even funny.

Eventually someone is going to wait on Joshua in the 1st round and knock his block off when he comes charging forward trying to get a quick knockout. Dillian Whyte almost did the job on Joshua in their fight last year. You can argue that the only reason Whyte didn’t KO Joshua was because his shoulder gave out on him. If Whyte was able to punch with power with his left shoulder beyond the 2nd round, I think he would have knocked Joshua out the way that Romanian Mihai Nistor did in the 3rd round of their fight in 2011. All Nistor did was nail Joshua with left hands over and over again until he was staggering. The referee had no choice but to halt the fight in order to save Joshua. The thing is, Nistor is no bigger puncher than Molina. He was willing to let his hands go, and that was the reason he scored a knockout. If I’m Molina, I’d be studying the Joshua vs. Nistor fight in detail. I’d also watch Joshua’s fights from the 2012 Olympics, because those guys all got the better of him in my opinion.

“But when you get a fighter willing and determined to do something, then you put a title on the line, they know it’s the opportunity of a lifetime,” said Wilder about Molina. “We all saw Molina fight me, and he put up a hell of a fight because it was for the belt, and he wanted to provide for his family. I think he’s going to do the same.”

Molina sparred with Wilder to get him ready for his fight against Chris Arreola last April. That sparring likely will come in handy for Molina when he gets inside the ring with Joshua, because the 6’7” Wilder is taller, faster and more powerful than Joshua. If Molina was able to spar with Wilder on a daily basis without getting clocked by him, then he could give Joshua all he could handle when he gets inside the ring with him on December 10.
Molina is in the perfect position to create a big upset in this fight.

It’s pretty obvious that Molina was chosen because they wanted someone that they felt they could beat with 100 percent surety, because Joshua cannot afford to lose this fight. There’s a big payday that Joshua will be getting in his fight against Wladimir Klitschko next April. Joshua’s promoter Eddie Hearn obviously wasn’t going to put him in with someone that had a 50-50 chance or better of beating him like with Luis Ortiz, who he also promotes. Hearn could have made that fight if he wanted to, but he didn’t. You have to ask yourself why not? I think it’s painfully obvious that he feels Joshua will beat Molina, so naturally he’s the one who gets the fight. But if Molina can beat Joshua, then the fight between him and Klitschko won’t happen.

I just wonder if Molina would then get a shot at fighting Wladimir for the vacant WBA ‘Super Championship’ or if the WBA would still give the green light between Joshua and Wladimir. I must say it would look highly unfair, given Joshua coming off a loss to Molina, but at Klitschko. He’s fighting for the WBA title and he’s coming off of a loss to Tyson Fury in his last fight.