CHANGED MAN
cut – and the risk is that the fight with Franklin provided the latest – penetrates as deeply as the last.
The reinvention he sought ahead of the rematch with Ruiz Jnr – and it should not be overlooked that he contacted Angel Fernandez ahead of his first defeat, which was his first fight since the remarkable first between Deontay Wilder and Fury – was ultimately unnecessary, and has contributed to the unconvincing performances that, excluding in the rematch with Usyk, he has produced since he avenged that defeat.
Joshua had cut a more focused figure in the days before fighting Franklin – as though his time in Dallas around James, the Charlos and Errol Spence had helped him – and yet by the conclusion of the opening round he was already exchanging words with Franklin, whose willingness to trash talk and pull faces at Joshua quickly and consistently got under the former champion’s skin.
He convinced in leading with his hurtful, authoritative jab in the second round as much as he had in the first, but his nose started to bleed when he took one right hand in the second, and if it wasn’t that and his potential difficulty breathing, then his demeanour changed when absorbing another right hand.
With so much experience at the highest
SINCE the up-and-down war with Wladimir Klitschko in 2017, Joshua has been the full 12-round distance on five occassions and scored three stoppages, of which only one came inside eight rounds. That is not a criticism, particularly when one considers the level of Joshua’s opposition, but it does underline a conscious change of approach. of levels it should not have proved so easy for Franklin to have discouraged Joshua, particularly when the American had also just been hurt when Joshua countered a double jab with a strong right hand. Thereafter Joshua regardless became more tense and upright, and they increasingly fought at a range that suited Franklin – largely because by then Joshua was also battling with his mind.
If it was illogical and risky for Joshua, the considerably bigger fighter, Franklin – over 20lbs lighter than when his fast hands had impressed against Whyte – was quicker on his feet. The range at which they were fighting was similar to that Ruiz Jnr was once able to take advantage of and that Joshua therefore avoided in their rematch, and for all that Joshua was never hurt by the punches Franklin landed, they contributed to his inability to re-establish his rhythm, and the distance between them reduced the power of his own.
The fourth round was perhaps the American’s best, and largely because of Joshua’s increasing hesitancy. Franklin, willing to let his hands go inside, where Joshua remains so limited, at one stage forced Joshua back to the ropes and to cover up, but it was also telling that the first swelling to appear was under Franklin’s right eye. Franklin, from Saginaw, Michigan, landed an uppercut – a punch the 33-yearold Joshua was neglecting – in the fifth round, and succeeded in making Joshua look disorganised when they then traded. When ahead of the sixth he was the first off his stool he highlighted his increased self-belief as much as Joshua’s uncertainty, but he thereafter rarely excelled.
It took until the eighth for Joshua to demonstrate anything like the rhythm and momentum he had shown during the opening two rounds in his hometown, and it was then almost immediately taken from him when the referee Marcus Mcdonnell stopped them to warn them over their escalating tempers. When he recovered it somewhat in the 10th, Franklin then showed signs of getting broken down.
Despite the nervous energy he was likely burning, the career-heaviest Joshua – who often leaned on Franklin when they clinched – was considerably fresher entering the final round. He landed a hurtful uppercut and a combination, but above all else remained frustrated, as he demonstrated when squaring up to
Franklin and having to be separated from him after the final bell.
“I can’t blame Franklin for anything that goes on in that ring because it’s all about me,” Joshua – the winner via respective scores of 118-111, 117-111 and 117-111 from the ringside judges Steve Gray, Alex Levin and Fabian Guggenheim – later said with profound accuracy despite by then attempting to deliver his most convincing elite professional athlete’s act.
“Anything that happens in life is not to blame others. I gotta take accountability. If I didn’t want Franklin to hold me I had to move my feet and create space. That’s just down to me. If I would have created space I would have been able to get that knockout. It’s not him. It’s all me.
“He didn’t get under my skin; I just raised my game. You wanna trash talk? I’ll trash talk as well.”
It had, until then, felt like a mostly positive week for Eddie Hearn and DAZN – one in which the signings of Jack Catterall and Sunny Edwards had been followed by the announcement of Mauricio Lara-leigh Wood II, and also by encouraging victories for Campbell Hatton and Galal Yafai.
Birmingham’s Yafai had resisted some educated pressure from Moises Calleros,
of Monterrey, Mexico, to impose his superior quality of punching and force the intervention of the referee Kieran Mccann 44 seconds into the fourth of 10 scheduled rounds. Yafai had been landing consistently when a left-right put Calleros down, and though Calleros appeared capable of carrying on after falling to his knees and returning to his feet, his protests seemed solely for the benefit of the cameras.
Hatton, of Manchester, had required only 89 seconds to stop Louis Fielding.
He had already targeted Fielding’s body during a fast start when a left dropped Fielding, from Tamworth and who made little effort to beat Mccann’s count of 10.
Michael Polite Coffie was considerably less willing to accept Howard Foster ending his fight with Fabio Wardley 45 seconds into the fourth round. After losing the opening two rounds, the New Yorker had some success in trapping Ipswich’s Wardley in a corner in the third, but he was on the ropes in the fourth and struggling to defend himself against an opponent throwing and landing at will when Foster intervened. If Coffie looked capable of fighting on, the prolonged assault that inevitably would have followed would have changed that.
The evening’s most competitive and entertaining fight was that between Kane Baker and Jordan Flynn, which unfolded at a high pace and mostly at close range. Boxing News had them level when entering the eighth and final round, and therefore considered Oxford’s Flynn overconfident to be fighting as though he needed only to survive. Mccann scored 77-75 in his favour, when a draw would have been fairer on Baker, of Birmingham.
Foster scoring Benoit Huber – of Sion, Switzerland – a winner over Juergen Uldedaj via the same score was similarly unjust. BN had scored 77-75 for the Albanian, from Lezhe. Foster also oversaw Austin Williams stopping River Wilsonbent 61 seconds into the eighth of 10 rounds when the bleeding Coventry fighter’s corner threw in the towel, largely because he had been knocked down in the seventh by the latest straight left hand from Houston’s Williams.
In further fights overseen by Foster, the
Macedonian Alen Lauriolle, from Skopje, retired at the end of the first round of a fight against Hamburg’s Peter Kadiru that had been scheduled for six, and La-based Saudi Arabian Ziyad Almaayouf was scored a 39-37 winner over Georgi Velichkov, of Sofia, Bulgaria.
It was Mccann who oversaw Takeley’s John Hedges beating Daniel Bocianski, of Nowy Sacz, Poland, via scores of 80-72 over eight tedious rounds.
THE VERDICT The last thing Joshua needs is Tyson Fury – if he has a chance of rediscovering himself it’s against Dillian Whyte.