To become the poster boy of heavyweight boxing, British knockout merchant Anthony Joshua has to take out Wladimir Klitschko, the sport’s last great big man.
The stage is set for a passing of the torch moment.
Joshua, the 27-year-old with electrifying power in his mitts, fights a past-his-prime Klitschko at Wembley Stadium, the English capital’s national soccer arena, in front of a sell-out crowd of 90,000 on Sunday morning.
Klitschko has not stepped between the ropes since his mind-numbingly boring loss to Tyson Fury in 2015 – which snapped a 22-bout winning streak, with 20 of those in championship bouts.
In his absence, the heavyweight division that he and his brother Vitali – who also held an alphabet soup of titles between 2003 and 2012 – once ruled with an iron fist, has found new life with fresh faces like Deontay Wilder, Joseph Parker, and Joshua carrying the baton.
Joshua has the opportunity to put a nail in the coffin of one era and begin another on Sunday morning (AEST), potentially bringing the heavyweight division back to a position of prominence with a single punch.
That, of course, it easier said than done, though.
It’s a storied tradition in boxing to make your name off of the fading legacy of your heroes. Rocky Marciano punched Joe Louis into retirement. Mike Tyson furthered his meteoric rise by ruining a faded Larry Holmes. Even Floyd Mayweather and Manny Pacquiao used Oscar De La Hoya as a springboard to become box office magnets.
For Joshua to follow in their footsteps, he has to knock Klitschko loopy. And fast.
The charismatic Olympic gold medalist is a hungry young lion with crushing knockout power and a perfect 18-for-18 knockout rate but his lack of experience against elite heavies could prove to be his undoing.
Klitschko, the Ukranian striker who was considered the baddest man on the planet for more than a decade, is a defensive mastermind. Under the guidance of the late Emanuel Steward, the six-foot-six puncher crafted a fighting style designed to minimise punishment, which is underlined by the fact that he has not been knocked out in 13 years.
Joshua could still craft a legacy as an all-time great pugilist, but the test of a Hall of Fame-worthy boxer after three-and-a-half years as a pro is too much, too soon.
“There’s a lot Anthony Joshua still needs to learn,” Lennox Lewis, the last undisputed heavyweight champion of the world, told The Telegraph this week when quizzed about the streaking champion.
“As he goes on he will learn them but his trainers need to understand that too because each fight for him is a learning curve. You don’t want to learn in important fights, you want to be prepared for them.”
Joshua will be learning on the job tomorrow morning against Klitschko – a fighter more than capable of dragging him into deep waters and drowning him there.
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