Was Anthony Joshua past his prime when he fought Daniel Dubois

Well, if AJ actually, you know, boxed on a regular basis, perhaps one could rate him. As matters stand, he will probably fight just once this year, which is common for him. There is no way to accurately rate a fighter who boxes as often as Christmas comes. He faces ring rust most times that he steps into the ring.

 

Because Vitali literally told his brother not to risk forcing the knockout and wait for aj to gas late. Had Vitali not gave Wlad the wrong advice he would've flatlined aj

https://www.skysports.com/boxing/ne...klitschko-letting-anthony-joshua-off-the-hook

 

Joshuas prime ended the moment klitchko knocked him over. From that point on he pretty much went on a quest to become such a good boxer that it wouldnt happen again.

The problem with that is as much as he tried and as many different guys he got in to help with the boxing side of things he didnt have the natural ability/attributes to quite pull it off.

I think his mindset let him down in the end. Never quite recovered from that knockdown. He then tried too hard to avoid it happening again. Nine times out of ten when you concentrate too much on avoiding something.....it usually does happen again.

He was doing fine before that. Klitchko was maybe a little bit too soon for him. I remember his training regime back then tho....it was basically lots of strength and power work. After klitchko he started concentrating a lot more on boxing training while slowly losing his strength/power advantage over opponents.

In the end his success was never coming from being a great boxer. One of his biggest weaknesses is his foot speed going backwards....which meant he was always catchable as a boxer.

He had to push people back with his strength/power/size as opposed to boxing them. That got him caught against dubois tbf. But his strength/power work and hard tough sparring we,re missing as well as his mind being elsewhere.

He never really found the right fit for a trainer and he started having too much input in his training. Don charles the boy that trains dubois isnt a great trainer. He,d have been a good fit for joshua tho.

Although he,d have came away a lot more damaged from boxing to achieve greatness and i suspect his chin forced his hand a bit. People wont agree but its his biggest weakness. Its not the worst chin but at the top level....you cant afford the recovery time he needs to recover.

The only difference between him and bruno is....joshuas faculties remained intact unlike bruno,s. Everything else slowed down for too long. Speed. Stamina. Power. With bruno everything including his faculties went south.

Probably hard to decide for sure what went wrong. Probably as good as his strengths we,re he was always carrying pretty big natural weaknesses....that are hard to hide at the top level.

 

Yeah he was obviously past his prime in my opinion. If you told me I had to choose any version of Joshua to go rematch Dubois tomorrow night, it definitely wouldn't be the 35 year old version. I would choose the 29 year old version who got KO'd by Ruiz.

 

Joshua never had a prime.

 

AJ was definitely on the decline. His peak was about 5-6 years ago or even earlier than that

 

It turned out to be the wrong advice, but was fair looking at conditioning problems Wlad always had. Wlad was historically very vulnerable while gassing out. At the end of the day, wouldas don't exist. Shame, cause I was rooting for Klitschko at the time and really thought he could have pulled it off. One of the best heavyweight fights of the last 10 years. Top 2 for me.

 

Hard to know. Maybe, he's 34 which while not old for a heavyweight, he is a fighter who has always relied heavily on his physical attributes more than technical skills. Plus he's been fighting at the top level for a long time, winning a title early in his career so it's plausible that he could be past his prime.

But he may have simply taken Dubois lightly and had an off night, it's not like he hasn't before come in over confident and put on a stinker of a performance. He looked awful against Dubois the worst he's ever looked, was it overconfidence perhaps, we need to see how he looks in his next fight to know for sure.

I question his hunger and focus now. He fought soft touches for a while now, which was never his previous modus operandi, he used to look for the best available. Plus he didn't immediately rematch Dubois like he did with Ruiz Jr. This suggests he doesn't have the same confidence or mindset. Even if he isn't physically shot, he might be mentally shot. All that money, plus these clear losses to Usyk and now Dubois, may have taken his self belief.

 

He shouldn,t continue but if he does. They badly need to simplify it. Their too busy working on all these different things....to the point hes not even fight ready by the time of the fight.

No more master strategies or master game plans. No more different guys working on all these different specialised things.

They need to get him in the gym back doing power work. Tough gruelling sparring. They,d get better results concentrating on getting him properly fight ready for someone like dubois.

He wasnt mainly because hes running his own camp. Bringing in people as he pleases. He should have stopped this continual learning regime he went down.

At some point you have to make a decision of what actually benefits you and get to work with applying it.

Dubois did. His trainer put him in their fight ready. Whereas joshua.....is busy working on too many different things trying to be another usyk. Was never going to happen. What ends up happening is because the trainings....trying to do too many different things....you end up not quite good enough at any of it at that level.

One guy has to run the camp. I think he does a lot of employing etc.

I can understand his thinking. After klitchko he started thinking he needed to improve to avoid that knockdown. Nothing wrong with that. The problem was he concentrated too much on the boxing side of it and he slowly started neglecting his strength/power work.

That decision itself might have been a good one for some boxers but it wasnt for joshua. He was probably too late too become a great boxer at that point and had one too many weaknesses for it.

Similar to wilder tbh. Hes a much better boxer than wilder but wilders training team until the new guy knew that teaching him to be a great boxer was futile. They got him effective at what he was good at.

Joshua was more versatile than wilder....but it still ended up making him an inferior fighter in the long run.

 

It doesn't matter if he was prime or not. The problem was his skills. AJ is the only veteran world level boxer I've seen whose skills are worse now than when he debuted. The amateur mistakes he made against Dubious were inexcusable.

The irony is that AJ trying to learn boxing 'finesse' has actually made him less skilled and less effective.

 

Yeah because klitschko was 41 and inactive prime Klitschko by brutal KO.

It's quite ironic that for years aj fans claimed joshua was green and inexperienced against Wladimir yet in hindsight aj fans instead claim he in the midst of his prime after joshua failed to beat the best guys when he was supposed to be in his peak

 

AJ hadn't fought anyone since Usyk that came to win. Dubois was the first proper test after Usyk. I think AJ has lost his confidence which is terrible when in the ring with a young, hungry fighter.

 

100%. Prime Klitschko knocks Fury out as well.

Both things can be true at the same time. For me tho, AJ's peak in 2018. Great year beating 2 best available heavyweights in the world.

 

Prime klitschko couldn't knock out glass jawed Haye

To be fair he's knocked me out a few times, trying to sit through his grappling matches. I can't even finish a highlight video without keeling over

Doctors around the globe should prescribe his fights for insomnia. Would save a fortune on pharmaceuticals. Though levels of Depression would likely rise, if anyone was made to watch that shyte