Anthony Joshua's path forward?

He doesn't have one. He is a Glass Jawed Fighter who will continue to get KOed over and over as long as he is in there with anyone who can punch.

 

he will fight a stiff and then challenge usyk in yet another pointless rematch, after usyk beats Dubouis in a pointless rematch

 

I imagine they are all busting a nut trying to make the Fury fight, shame AJ isn't pushing hard for a Dubois rematch

 

Hearn just said AJ is still healing the ijnury. It will take next 8 weeks, he will start the camp in May and fight no earlier than August. No names were provided.

 

Fury literally retired when the fight was finally possible to be made.

 

I agree but then AJ and Hearn shouldn't give it the big talk about him being an old school fighter and wanting to right the wrong

 

His best days are behind him. He is older, slower, and gun shy. His path forward is to milk as much pay as he can fighting opponents with no KO power.

 

Retirement hopefully.

 

I am sure Hearn is trying to line up Parker vs Joshua for the WBO title.

 

There are some rumours about that, but AJ won't be able to fight until late in the summer anyway so he may just miss his chance.

 

It depends if the Dubois performance was where he's at right now, or just a particularly bad night.

That was a very poor effort, without question - but equally it highlighted his inability to trade with a big puncher, and his limited recovery when in that situation... I still think he could be competitive, if boring, by fighting more for points wins instead of aiming to be popular for getting KO wins - I'm also fairly sure he just won't do that, whether it's pride, stupidity or poor coaching I have no idea.


It's possible he's just on a decline - normally that means it's time for a fighter to test the next generation before retiring, but there isn't much of a next generation (that's anywhere near ready to fight him) that he hasn't already fought... A Dubois rematch could be interesting, so could a Parker rematch - but there's no olympic gold medallist begging to get to the top of the pros (as Jalolov clearly isn't interested), and the prospects are either too green just yet (eg: Itauma) or have fallen at much lower hurdles (Anderson, Sanchez, etc).

 

Depends on whether Joshua still has the hunger and self belief. It's possible that the loss to DDD was due to him not preparing properly and not performing, it's not like he hasn't underperformed before when he fought Ruiz.

If he still has it, he should be chasing the Dubois rematch. But if he doesn't then we'll likely see him look to fight a soft touch or cash out against Fury or Wilder.