Wladimir: Joshua is a copy of me

boxingnews24.com

By Scott Gilfoid: The 41-year-old Wladimir Klitschko says he sees IBF heavyweight champion Anthony Joshua as a mirror of himself, but at a considerably younger age at 27. The two big heavyweights will be fighting in a little over two months on April 29 at Wembley Stadium in London, England.

Wladimir sees the fight as the toughest test, although you would have to look at his 2003 fight against the late Corrie Sanders as a far tougher test. The blazing fast and very powerful southpaw Sanders wiped Wladimir out in just 2 rounds. Wladimir never fought Sanders again for some reason. Instead, Wladimir’s older brother Vitali Klitschko avenged his loss in a grueling fight that saw Vitali staggered at one point.

The 2003 version of Corrie Sanders was faster and more powerful than Joshua in my view.
Wladimir folded almost immediately in getting dropped by Sanders in the opening round.

“It’s the toughest challenge I’ve ever had, because in a certain way he is a copy of me size-wise and he is a world champion in a professional sport,” said Wladimir about Joshua to skysports.com.

The 6’6” Joshua is about the same size as the 6’6” Wladimir, but that’s the only thing they have in common. Sanders, 6’4 ½”, was almost the same size as Wladimir, and he took him apart straightaway. Wladimir shouldn’t get too preoccupied with the size of his opponents, because even the slightly shorter fighters are incredibly dangerous, as we saw with Sanders. Mike Tyson was only 5’11”, and he would have had an excellent chance of beating Wladimir if the two had met each other during the prime of Tyson’s career.

Wladimir’s problems against Joshua are more related to the fact that he showed an inability to throw punches in his last fight against Tyson Fury. Wladimir has also been out of the ring for 2 years without a tune-up. It’s not good news that Wladimir chose not to take a tune-up fight or two to get ready for Joshua. What was the big rush for Wladimir to take this fight? He could have easily fought twice in six months with tune-up fights to get ready for the Joshua fight, but he didn’t. I think that’s a mistake.

If Wladimir isn’t going to throw punches against Joshua, then the fight will end quickly with Joshua obliterating him. The same thing would happen if Wladimir fought some of the top contenders like Luis Ortiz and Carlos Takam. If Wladimir doesn’t throw punches, he’s going to be a sitting duck against those fighters.

Wladimir and Joshua are very different fighters starting with the age. Joshua appears to have a better chin than Wladimir. I’m not sure how much better Joshua’s punch resistance is, because he was staggered by a simple left hook by Dillian Whyte in their fight in 2015. Joshua appears to at least have a slightly better chin than Wladimir. In the stamina department, Joshua probably isn’t on par with Wladimir. Joshua is carrying around a lot of body-building type muscle that is more suited to the beach than a sport like boxing, which requires a lot of cardio.