AJ showed signs of age-related decline

I’m not so sure about that. All fighters age differently and Joshua is less than a month away from being 35. He looked like he regressed to me.

 

Joshua was even the bigger, heavier man Saturday.

Can you imagine if Dubois outweighed Joshua by nearly 80 pounds and was hitting him like that? (Like Zhang-Wilder).

Excellent win by Dubois. He's a breath of fresh air in the division.

He's totally turned it around.

 

Yeah
But a few months ago he looked incredibly sharp against Wallin and Ngannou when he could impose his rythm. Dubois battered him early and stunned him then he was caught with an huge overhand. This is not about age decline but rather that he cannot fight under big pressure, which we already saw in the Ruiz fight

 

An effective jab can throw off the timing of guys who depend on the jab to set everything up.

And the jab from Dubois was a power shot that snapped Anthony's head back repeatedly.

You can't work off your own jab when you're looking up at the lights every time your opponent throws his.

 

Dubois is just a better fighter than AJ, and not 39 years old.
It's not rocket science.
AJ has always been robotic and prone to malfunction. If the opponent is younger than 39 and punches harder than Wallin, less than 20 pounds overweight, and is not from MMA, it is likely he'll make AJ look ordinary, or worse. If he's stronger than AJ too, it'll be the massacre we saw the other night.

 

Well in previous posts I did say Dubois deserves most of the credit, but that aside 35 isn’t young. Not for boxing. Some guys age better than others. Fighting Ngannou a novice in the sport was made to order for Joshua and Wallin was a career sparring partner of Aj’s that possessed below average power.
So while I would say Dubois deserves majority of credit for what happened to AJ I don’t think I could quite say AJ is still prime either.

 

He fought scared after Ruiz, Wallin was a fringe contender and aj still relied on counters. He looked terrified against Pulev and that was some years back

 

So true. Check out 90% of YouTube comments slagging Wilder off.

They talk like he's not allowed to be past his prime because he was apparently always terrible. So the corpse that showed up to the Zhang fight is supposed to be the exact same guy that knocked out Ortiz and gave Fury hell.

 

While im not convinced that Joshua's loss was down to age myself, the difference between him and Wilder is that he'd proven himself mostly consistently against higher level opposition. Easier to compare attributes from now to then when he's been facing a good level of competition for awhile. Wilder fought so few top guys that the level of his ability, for me atleast, was always kind of in question. He had like 2 wins over top 10 guys, with one being Stiverne and the other being Ortiz who was pretty largely unproven himself. Easy to look like an incredible fighter against worse opposition (see the Difference between AJs Ngannou and Dubois performances). Did Wilder struggle to land on parker because he's old or because he just never had the ability to land on guys like that, Has he lost his fire and power or was he just fighting weaker chinned guys that were more defensively open etc.

With Joshua we have a better frame of reference to judge if he's declined or not and in which ways he has. He took the power of Klitschko and Whyte much better than he did Dubois' so maybe his chin has declined. He didn't get hit as much against the likes of Ruiz, Parker, Wlad and Povetkin so maybe his reflexes aren't what they once were. It doesn't offer a perfect comparison but it's better than what Wilder's resume allows.

 

Wilder took a worse beating from Fury than aj ever has clearly that must have done something

 

No he didn't. Look at the rbr they said he fought scared against Pulev and he did. He took more risks against Dubois and Helanius actually. He got 2 chances against Usyk only in the rematch was he agressive, he couldn't adjust the first fight because he has low iq.

aj was always overrated. Dubois isn't going to go on to dominate the division after Usyk and Fury retire, there are much younger fighters and he will get washed soon

 

Nothing to do with reflexes. More to do with complacency.