Jittery Joshua an unhappy camper
OPINION: There’s a whiff of panic in the Anthony Joshua camp.
Some last-minute shopping for sparring partners suggests all is not going according to plan as world heavyweight boxing’s main man sharpens his tactics for his clash with Joseph Parker in Cardiff in just over two weeks.
A couple of weeks ago there was the surprise move to try to get his last opponent, Carlos Takam, into the training ring.
It’s understood there have been late calls made to Americans Malik Scott, who has been previously used by Parker, and Erica Molina, another of Joshua’s recent victims, to get them to the Sheffield training camp.
Then there was the strange circumstances of Joshua having Kiwi amateur Patrick Mailata in the ring with him briefly. With all due respect to young Patrick who soon heads away to the Commonwealth Games full of ambition, he’s a long way off the experience demanded at this level of the professional game.
The sparring ring is one of the domains that is usually off-limits to the media, a crucial stage of training where little is spoken about publicly.
But the recent words of Joshua’s boss Eddie Hearn provided some insight: ‘‘AJ doesn’t want to spar someone who is not on a world level, AJ wants someone who is competitive.’’
Surely that should have been the plan from the start for a fight of this importance where three of the four heavyweight belts – Parker’s WBO and Joshua’s IBF and WBA titles – are on the line.
The sparring phase of these lengthy camps is not the time for lingering doubts, but the late hustling in the Joshua camp suggest there has been difficulties in finding boxers to replicate Parker’s key assets – his hand speed and movement.
There have been doubts in Joshua’s mind for some time when
it comes to Parker. He admitted in the buildup to get this fight, where the Kiwis were calling out the big Brit’s ‘‘suspect chin’’, that he was confused by Parker’s approach.
Anyone who has watched Joshua and Parker confront each other at close quarters in the subsequent The Gloves Are Off interview in the UK, will see some confusion in Joshua.
It seems Team Parker have got into his head just as they intended.
Joshua’s performance didn’t reek of extreme confidence and Parker more than held his own in staring down Joshua and finding a strong reply when it was needed.
It’s the sort of characteristics Parker will need to show in the ring if he is to have a chance of walking away with all three titles.
Winning the buildup means
nothing if there is no success at the big show.
But Parker, quietly going about his business in Las Vegas and appearing his usual smiling and obliging self in a steady stream of interviews with international media, looks to have laid the platforms to bring his best game to Cardiff.
By all accounts his sparring has been going well and his general training has been superb.
In a sport where confidence is so key, Parker seems to be in the ideal head space.
Can the same be said of Joshua, a man so used to walking through opponents but suddenly confronted by a rival not shy to point out some awkward truths and answer back when questioned?