I find it bizarre that people still think Joshua can mix it with either of these. He cannot take a punch, doesn’t like taking hits and he folds when in a war.
it makes no sense to think Joshua can go into a contest with Wilder exchanging 1:1 punches, Fury has far more punch resistance and still got rocked and knocked down, his powers of recovery are in a different stratosphere to anyone in the division, which is something he, and only he, can factor into a fight like yesterday’s. Joshua is not getting up from the same shots, and even if he did, he’d be wobbly and ready to topple.
Wilder doesn’t need to outbox Joshua, he just needs to get exchanges going and with his greater endurance, chin and heart, there’s only going to be one winner there. Joshua was wary of a cruiserweight’s power in his last contest and backed off after feeling what Usyk had to offer… what do you honestly think happens when a heavyweight does the same thing?
Grouping Joshua with Whyte also makes no sense, as one’s a bulldog who will gladly take a hit to give one and fights almost exclusively on the inside - Whyte would give Wilder more trouble than Joshua, for me. Styles make fights, and that’s a worse contest for Wilder than Joshua who is the more static target and the more gunshy in outright exchanges.
The reason thoughts have changed after yesterday are pretty obvious, surely? Wilder showed the chin he has and the power still in his hands in a full-on melee; he can make the fight with Joshua ugly and scrappy and it’s questionable if Joshua even has the confidence in his arsenal anymore. His uppercut was right there for him last fight and was nowhere to be seen, and if he ain’t going to offer the detterents to keep control of Wilder, his less than stellar defence will be breached and he will be in a war he doesn’t have the heart or punch resistance for. There’s also Wilder’s punches round the back of the head and into the ear/temple area, we’ve seen how badly they affect Joshua, it wouldn’t take many of them to ring his bell. Wilder is worse off against the little, dumpier men who hit short and sharp and walk straight into their preferred range: Ortiz, Ruiz, Whyte where his big looping shots are not there for him, thats’s not Joshua.
I thought it was a 50:50 contest previously; if Wilder hasn’t fecked his own punch resistance off the back of this last fight with Fury, I don’t think it’s that anymore. Joshua would have to beat him clean and tidily I.e. not be involved in exchanges or a war, and I just don’t believe he has the tools to make that so - he has very sloppy moments in bouts and offers chances to fighters to hit him that he could not afford to happen with Wilder. Wilder isn’t a better boxer than Joshua, but he absolutely doesn’t have to be to beat him.