Povetkin is a much better fighter than Parker. He can fight, won the gold medal in the super heavyweight division and is used to fighting big men...................he has combinations, power, good chin and good defense. He might give Joshua a really good fight, he has a much better chance of beating Joshua than Wilder..............
Mad respect for English glass cannon. If he fights Wilder or Povetkin next, forced to or not, he doesn’t shy away from tough fights and that is what boxing lacks right now. His competition gets increasingly better too, despite the fact that some of them are/were old and past it, some severely limited, he still fought and fights everyone who is anyone. Assuming he fights both, at the end of the day, only an idiot will call AJ a coward or cherry picker. (I’m looking at you, Deontae) An argument can be made though that few of his opponents would’ve murdered him in their primes. That said, hope Povetkin finishes what Wlad started. He’s got the tools but time is more of an opponent for him than AJ is.
No, it means I'm being objective and sticking to my set standard. If Joshua can't fulfill the standard and expectation that he should be fulfilling against an over matched opponent in Alexander Povetkin (Do I really need to tell you about the ridiculous advantages Joshua possesses over Povetkin?), then he deserves criticism. And if Joshua does fulfill the expectation / standard, then he deserves very little to no credit, since Povetkin was an over matched opponent to begin with in a mismatch.
No, I'm not! There are many other posters who have implied the same thing. That this bout would be an easy win for Joshua, to the point of it being like a mismatch. I'm just holding those claimers to their own standard. Anyway, it doesn't really take a rocket scientist to work out how this bout really should be a total mismatch to begin with anyway. Do I really need to spell it out for you? 1) Anthony Joshua's 95% KO rate > Alexander Povetkin's 69% KO Rate. 2) Anthony Joshua's 6 foot 6 height > Povetkin's 6 foot 1 height. 3) Anthony Joshua's 240+ pound body weight > Povetkin's -230 pound body weight. 4) Anthony Joshua's 82 inch reach > Povetkin's 75 inch reach. 5) Anthony Joshua's 28 years in age > Povetkin's 38 years in age. 6) Anthony Joshua's more muscular physique > Povetkin's less muscular and chubbier / fatter / pudgier physique. Should I go on? What advantage does Povetkin hold over Joshua? Pretty much nothing! Except some experience maybe. But that's about it! With all these advantages that Joshua holds over Povetkin, what would it make Joshua, if he fails to beat Povetkin as convincingly and as decisively as he should, based on those advantages? This is literally a fight between a totally undersized midget vs a giant muscular specimen, that looks almost like a different creature altogether. What would you say, if a 30 year old adult failed to brutally defeat a 5 year old child lopsidedly inside a boxing ring in a boxing match whilst holding all the advantages? Are you getting the picture now? Anyone that paints this match up as anything other than a total, disgusting, gruesome, gory and a horror mismatch is attempting to brainwash you! It's like Manny Pacquiao vs Sergey Kovaev!
It’s not a mismatch, you obviously just hate Joshua and want to dress it up as a mismatch so you can slate him afterward. Quite sad really.
So, would you pick the taller, younger 100% KO rate, Tony Yoka to beat AJ? Or do even you realize boxing can't be broken down into statistics. What are you? American?
Necessary fight. Good mandatory. This is what they are for ... to make the fights that are meaningful and have some enduring historical consequence. Much better than excessive voluntaries to dodge better fights. Champions should fight top opposition.
You're committing a false equivalence logical fallacy! Tony Yoka is not an elite / top heavyweight today. Whilst Anthony Joshua is. So they can't even be compared for this very simple reason in the first place. Secondly, Tony Yoka doesn't hold as many advantages over Anthony Joshua as Anthony Joshua holds over Alexander Povetkin. You do realize this, right? It's not a matter of having one or two more advantages. But it's a matter of one boxer having significantly greater number of advantages by a significantly large margin. And when that happens, a fight between those two boxers becomes a mismatch. Do you now understand my point? Joshua holds FAR TOO MANY advantages over Povetkin, for this bout to be called anything less than a total and an utter mismatch. What advantage does Povetkin hold over Joshua, other than experience and other than maybe being slightly more skilled? So how does Povetkin even stand much of a chance at winning, with that many disadvantages?
It's got nothing to do with hate. Rather, It's to do with being objective and being consistent with set standards I initially set. How about you explain how this bout between Joshua and Povetkin isn't a 'mismatch', when Joshua holds all those advantages over Povetkin that I mentioned?