Joshua's performance vs Ruiz II is seriously underrated

I would say Fury was (or could have been) way closer to being special than AJ did. But they both are Usyk's children at the end of the day.

 

Fury and Joshua couldn't really be more different and that's why they're so hard to compare.

Fury is a natural - he could intuitively "just do it" where Joshua was much more trained... On Fury's absolute best day, he could be really special.
He's also lazy, doesn't live the life and isn't really the fighting man he claims (if he was, he would've fought more, not waited out Usyk and fought Joshua). He's also always been error prone, and that's nearly lead to losses on several occasions - he's been lucky that that didn't happen.

The other difficult thing with Fury is working out exactly how much credit is due for the Wlad win - I don't think it's the full-on masterclass it was made out to be, nor do I think Wlad was at his best, but it's still very easily his best win and still a really formidable opponent even if not at 100%... A rematch would've told us a lot, and I struggle to ignore the lack of one as a dark cloud over the win.

Joshua isn't a natural - he had to be trained, and in fairness he took the training quite well for the most part...
Where he really struggled is mixing up styles and mentally processing when things didn't go right - where Fury could Intuit that quite successfully, Joshua had to be shown and trained through it (not always entirely successfully!).

Head to head is also really hard to say - I tend to think Joshua would've had a good chance, but that's mostly because I don't think Fury would've hurt him enough to avoid Joshua catching him at some point.

 

Despite claiming you dislike Aj, you come to his aid always and never criticise him, which you are entitled to do.

But why not just admit you are a fan?

 

Why should he have stopped him? Ruiz has never been close to being stopped

 

LOL these Joshua nuthuggers are going feral in this thread. It's like you can see them starting to break mentally.

Here are their new points:

Joshua got hit by a "lucky shot" from Dubois and never recovered (sounds like what they said after Ruiz I)
Joshua could have been a slick out-boxer but he felt pressure to KO people for the fans (didn't he try to box Usyk? how'd that go?)
The fat Ruiz win was a "total schooling" and is "underrated", yet Fury jabbing and moving vs. fit Klitschko is "dreadful, boring, not even a fight"
Ruiz' weight was irrelevant because someone, somewhere said it would make him better

Every thread is the three stooges, BubblesUK, Badbot, MaccaveliMacc, rushing in to prop up the overrated career of their favorite fighter. But trust them, guys, they don't even like Joshua.

 

It reminded me of the Lewis vs Tua fight - a fight I was very excited to watch in the run up to it, but ended up being very one sided and ultimately quite dull.

it was a very good boxing performance from Joshua, and a good way to put the KO defeat behind him - but in some ways this was the fight where the old Joshua got sidelined - he boxed very well and was never in any danger, and seemed to fall in love with this approach - which ultimately led to the more cautious and less effective Joshua that we see now. It de-emphasized his offensive prowess, which in turn dimished his aura of threat.

 

A bit off? Guy was a zombie

 

That was an awful fight. You can't underrate awful.

Joshua had him down in the third round in fight one and should've finished him then. In the return, Ruiz was in terrible shape. Once he saw what Ruiz looked like at the weigh in, Joshua should've jumped on him and taken him out fast.

You can have a bad first fight and regroup and dominate - like Roy Jones against Montell Griffin and Sergio Martinez against Paul Williams.

Joshua-Ruiz II was a bad fight. No way around it. One guy was terribly unfit, and the other was spooked. And they both fought that way.

I understand the adage about "just win now and entertain them next time" ... but that doesn't mean we have to pretend the "just win" part was better than it was. It wasn't. It was bad.

 

Because I'm not...

And I do criticise him - I'm just not hyperbolic about it like most are.

 

I don't think it was underrated, and in my opinion it wasn't a sufficient avenging of his KO loss.

Ruiz came in the worst condition of his career, and AJ couldn't stop him? Someone like Kabayel would end that Ruiz inside 8 rounds.

 

If he was a zombie then what does that make you as Povetkin took several powershots from Whyte while remaining upright. Okay Povetkin is a boxer but he still has a human head/skull like you or me except that if we took those shots we would be clinically dead.

So not quite a zombie but not in top form either.

 

Well considering I was able to watch the fight, I wasn't a zombie
Povetkin really was not not fit to fight that night
Personally I've never seen a boxer look so ill whilst walking to the ring

Your narrative is cool though

 

Do people think he beats Kabayel knowing what we know now

 

That's the big question though - what do we actually know now?

We know Kabayel beat Zhang convincingly... We also know that Zhang is old and has had a very poor gas tank the entire way through his professional career.

Does this make Kabayel a top contender? Maybe...
The problem is, there's absolutely no depth below that - the Chisora fight was a very long time ago and after that you're looking at very overhyped prospects.


And Joshua?
We know he lost to Dubois, and lost early... We don't know whether Dubois was massively superior or got a bit lucky to make it look as dominant as it did with the early stoppage.

We don't necessarily even know whether Dubois wins that fight more often than not, but the lack of rematch suggests Joshua probably believes he does... Avoidance of contracted rematches usually says a lot about the fighter avoiding it - whether they won or lost the first fight.


We need to see them both fight more - then we'll get a better idea of how declined Joshua actually is... And Kabayel just desperately needs some damn depth to that resume.

 

He ran from a complete blob of a man
Wisely sure, but that does not warrant
Praise.