Is Derrick James making Joshua better or worse?

The bodybuilders trainer isn't the problem

 

Joshua is a shell of himself. His is slower than before and now seems to have little punch resistance. It isn't the trainer, its father time.

 

For a while, even after the rematch, Andy Ruiz seemed to be the biggest issue AJ has….

…but he showed he can still bare down and show some grit in his valiant effort against Usyk the second time - he was just overmatched… too bad he acted like an ass afterwards - but I guess emotions took over.

Looking forward to seeing him in there again, hope the Wilder fight goes down!

 

James said after the Helenius fight he was happy with what Joshua put into practice of what they had been working on and specifically his defence and the way he 'disarmed Helenius of his strengths'.

If Joshua tries that pitty pat stuff against Wilder that he did in the early rounds against Helenius, he won't have to worry about the later rounds, he will be busy recovering from concussion.

 

Fun fact about AJ, superior man and future mayor of Lundin: He's the only SHW to have been beaten three times by a cruiserweight.
Ruiz (actually an obese LHW, but at least an obese cruiser)
Usyk x 2

 

Even twice is a record, I don't count Ruiz because he hasn't been under 200 lbs since he was a preteen. Bowe had a close MD loss to Holyfield but he's the only other highly pedigreed SHW to lose to a cruiser. Vitali lost to Byrd though, who was a SMW/LHW initially and smaller than Usyk or Holyfield.

 

Worse in my opinion. The most obvious change is his lead hand, now it's pinned to his chin in a high guard which was idiotic vs Usyk because it meant his jab had to travel further to land so in the 2nd fight his jab basically was non existent. If you can't even land a jab how are you meant to land anything else?

I get they are trying to improve his defence but shelling up behind a high guard is only one of many methods to improve defence and it's the most basic. Head and upper body movement would be more effective and take him to the next level as a fighter but instead we have a Joshua, upright behind a guard not moving his head much, which to me seems like a step back.

Keeping that lead arm in the guard position also means his lead hand now lacks variety. No longer jabbing from underneath a guard, no posting with the lead hand, no lead hand control which is what Usyk did to take away Joshua's lead hand in the first fight. He's basically decided to sacrifice a superior lead hand for a tighter defence.

 

I think he is worse now. I don't know much about technical boxing stuff, but if Helenius was able to reconstruct his face, it means there's something wrong.

 

Better.

 

I don't know about that Olu. Ive got my doubts about Derrick in the Crawford/Spence fight. Maybe its knowing the great Curtis Cokes so well, who was Derrick's trainer & mentor, I know Curtis would not have let any fighter keep going back in when he obviously had no chance of winning the fight. Errol was not is 100% condition which was obvious, Bud was obviously too much on that night. I do so wish Curtis was still here so I could ask his opinion.

 

I'm not certain any trainer could make a substantial difference in AJ at this point.

 

I wonder what was on that Klitschko USB stick. Wasn’t there some message for AJ on there?

 

Wlad n Ruiz made Ajay bad n nuw you got James there to ruin the last bit left

U can see the Errol Spence affect in ajs last fight with being slow bad footed robotic way to go!!