Frank Lotierzo concurred, declaring, “After twelve rounds of inept boxing, two things are clear. Wladimir Klitschko won’t fight and Tyson Fury can’t fight, at least not at the championship level. Fury was very lucky to have been in with a fighter like Klitschko, who has gone back physically as a fighter and, on this night, demonstrated that, when he doesn’t own every physical advantage conceivable over his opponent, he is very limited and physically handcuffed by his mental trepidation.”
That was the biggest knock on Klitschko: his mental state. Older brother Vitali (who reigned first as WBO and then as WBC heavyweight champion for five years) was universally perceived as the tougher Klitschko. As Tom Gerbasi wrote, “Vitali finds a way to win. Wladimir finds a way to lose. That’s the difference.”
Years ago, I had breakfast with the Klitschko brothers and asked each one whether he was more nervous when he or his brother was fighting. Wladimir answered first: “When Vitali fights, I am more nervous than he is.” Then Wladimir added with a smile, “And when I fight, I am more nervous than he is.”
Anthony Joshua was born in England. His parents are from Nigeria, where Anthony spent part of his early childhood with his mother, who was trying to establish a business in her native land.
Joshua was six years old when Klitschko won his Olympic gold medal. One day before Anthony turned eleven, Wladimir won his first world championship belt. In 2012, sixteen years after Klitschko accomplished the feat in Atlanta, Joshua won a gold medal in the super-heavyweight division at the London Olympics.
Prior to meeting Klitschko in the ring, Joshua had eighteen knockout victories in as many professional fights. He’d claimed the IBF heavyweight belt by knocking out Charles Martin on April 9, 2016. Next, he successfully defended his title against Dominic Breazeale and Eric Molina. Everyone agreed that Joshua had a great deal of potential. But prior to facing Klitschko, he’d never fought a world-class fighter.
Eighty thousand tickets for Joshua-Klitschko went on sale in January and quickly sold out. Later that month, municipal officials approved the sale of an additional ten thousand tickets, raising the stadium capacity to ninety thousand. That broke the previous Wembley record set by the 2014 rematch between Carl Froch and George Groves and equaled the British attendance record for boxing established in 1939 when Len Harvey successfully defended his British and Commonwealth light-heavyweight titles against Jock McAvoy in London.
Joshua-Klitschko was televised on pay-per-view in the United Kingdom by Sky Sports. There was a delay in finding a TV home in the United States due to what Bart Barry called “a hundred-day catfight between HBO and Showtime that may be a plot to drive the last fifty thousand committed boxing fans in our nation to pirated streams but it probably isn’t.”
Ultimately, HBO and Showtime shared TV rights.
The promotional narrative was keyed to Joshua. The fight would be “epic . . . a stepping stone toward greatness . . . a pivotal moment in boxing history.”
The fighters conducted themselves with sportsmanship and dignity throughout the promotion.
In a reference to erratic past behavior by Tyson Fury and Shannon Briggs, Klitschko began a January 31 press conference for Joshua-Klitschko in New York with the observation, “I’m used to fighters throwing tables or wearing Batman costumes or chasing me in a speedboat. So this is very nice for me.”
Referring further to the Fury fight, Klitschko added, “What happened was a great experience for me. I always think that, as one window closes, another opens. Something came out of me and I have tremendous motivation and I’m obsessed with the goal of getting the titles back.”
But Wladimir sounded a bit pensive when talking about the past (“It’s good to be young and ambitious”). And he conceded, “It’s strange to be the B-side. I’m not used to that.”
Joshua, for his part, was respectful toward Klitschko (“He’s the real deal. He’s proved it. He’s lived it. He’s walked it”). But Anthony was forthright in saying, “I’m going for the knockout. That’s what I do. This is my gold-medal fight all over again.”
Joshua was a clear betting favorite. His team wouldn’t have taken the fight if it hadn’t believed that the oddsmakers were right. But most predictions as to the outcome were qualified with a “but.” That uncertainty was crucial to the promotion.
“This is the perfect time for the fight because of the risk,” promoter Eddie Hearn said. “It’s a gamble. If it wasn’t a risk, if it wasn’t a gamble, do you think we’d break pay-per-view records? Do you think we’d have 90,000 in Wembley? To make a great fight, the timing has to be perfect and there has to be risk on both sides. Anthony Joshua can lose and that’s exciting.”
Thirty months earlier, Joshua had served as a sparring partner for Klitschko prior to Wladimir’s 2014 knockout victory over Kubrat Pulev. Now those sparring sessions were scoured for clues.
“I didn’t go to try to prove anything with the sparring,” Joshua told the media. “I mainly went to see how a champion sets up his training camp.”
Pressed for more, Anthony added, “Wladimir is technical. He will try to maneuver you with his left hand to put you in position to throw his right hand. He’s patient. He was trying to set me up so he could throw his shots. That’s what I got from sparring with him.”
Klitschko also had memories of their time together.
“There are up to fifteen sparring partners in every camp,” Wladimir recounted. “People are coming and going, and some of them I don’t remember. But I remember Joshua. He impressed me with his attitude. He was very raw, but he carried himself well. I liked his attitude. He was in the background, learning. Sometimes you need to be quiet and just watch. He was observing everything. That is unusual. I’ve had Olympic champions and former world champions in my camp, but his attitude was totally different. He was not trying to impress anybody. He was sitting on the side, not talking too much. He was watching, learning, asking questions. He was very polite. He was different from the others. We got a feeling for each other. We sparred fifteen or twenty rounds together.”
But that was in 2014. Joshua had gotten better since then. Klitschko had gotten older. And sparring isn’t fighting.
The case for a Joshua victory on April 29 rested in part on the age differential between the fighters. Wladimir is forty-one. Anthony is twenty-seven. Earlier in Klitschko’s career, he’d shown a tendency to fade as fights progressed. At forty-one, he was expected to tire if pressured by Joshua.
Moreover, Klitschko has compiled an impressive body of work. But the names on his ring ledger have been lacking, particularly in recent years.
Since the start of 2012, Wladimir had beaten Jean Marc Mormeck, Tony Thompson, Mariusz Wach, Francesco Pianeta, Alexander Povetkin, Alex Leapai, Kubrat Pulev, and Bryant Jennings, and lost to Tyson Fury. His last impressive performance had been against Povetkin four years ago.
Luis Ortiz’s 2015 knockout of Bryant Jennings (who’d gone the distance against Klitschko seven months earlier) cast further doubt on Wladimir’s standing
And Klitschko hadn’t fought since November 2015, when he lost to Tyson Fury. The seventeen-month layoff was the longest of his career. Would Wladimir come back against Joshua rested and strong or would he come back old?
Rob McCracken has trained Joshua since Anthony’s days as an amateur. McCracken was deferential toward Klitschko in the build-up to the fight, saying, “He’s a very good fighter. He’s a former Olympic champion, been hugely successful as a heavyweight, been champion for a decade or so. Can box, can spoil, can punch, very experienced, very tricky. If you let Klitschko get going and he gets that jab going, he starts pushing and shoving and looking for the right hand, then he’s a real handful and difficult hard work. He’s been a tremendous fighter and he still is.”
But McCracken added, “As great a fighter as Klitschko has been, Father Time is a terrible person when he shows up. And he’s already shown up.”
Joshua sounded a similar note, saying, “Boxing is a young man’s
sport. It’s my time now.”
Ricky Hatton concurred, noting, “Klitschko seems to have been around forever. And none of us go on forever.”
Still, Wladimir was a live underdog. Joshua’s chin was suspect. And Klitschko can punch.
“What does Anthony do when he gets hit again and again?” Wladimir asked at the New York press conference. “What does he do if he has to go backward? Is he the new Lennox Lewis, or is he the new Frank Bruno?”
Tyson Fury had been able to neutralize Klitschko’s power because he circled constantly and used side-to-side movement to keep Wladimir turning. That’s not Joshua’s style.
Also, the other side of the age coin is experience.
Klitschko had fought sixty-eight times as a professional and gone into the tenth round or later on thirteen occasions. Joshua had logged a total of 103 minutes 27 seconds of ring time in his entire professional career and fought into the seventh round only twice (against Dillian Whyte and Dominic Breazeale). Each of Joshua’s other fights had ended inside of three rounds.
“A. J. has lots of energy,” Klitschko observed. “He’s young. He wants to show it. He has those big muscles that give him confidence. But did you hear about boxing? It’s the sweet science. Experience is something that you cannot buy in a shop. You gain it over the years. It is an advantage.”
“It’s hard to pick a winner,” Lennox Lewis said. “Anthony is a great young fighter. I have a lot of respect for him. He has worked hard and dealt with things well. But as far as experience goes, he is lacking a bit. You can go in there and knock out eighteen guys straight, but what have you learned? So you’ve got Joshua, who is young and strong. And you’ve got Klitschko, who is old but with so much knowledge and experience. That’s why it’s so intriguing.”
British boxing writer Gareth A. Davies framed the issue as follows: “It’s all about timing. Either Joshua and his team have got it spot-on and will feast on a great champion’s carcass; or Klitschko will delve into his memory bank, roll back the clock, get that jab pumping again, drain Joshua in clinches, and re-emerge as The Man, having taken a raw novice to school. Has the jump in class been carefully measured and timed to perfection or will the difference in levels be Joshua’s undoing?”
“Until you step into the ring with someone, you don’t know what you’re facing,” Joshua acknowledged.
“The question is out there,” Klitschko said. “Do I still got it, or is it too late?”
Then Wladimir put the fight in perspective in a way that suited him best: “Please excuse me as this may sound arrogant. But a parallel. Mount Everest, the highest mountain in the world. It’s been there for a long time and will be there for a long time. You can climb it during a certain period of time, during two weeks in April, I believe. You can get to the top and say, ‘I conquered Everest!’ Then you’ve got to run down because it’s going to take you down if you miss the time. A lot of people died there. Some made it back. But Mount Everest is still there. Is Mount Everest defeated? It’s still there and it’s going to take another life this April.”
The scene on fight night as Anthony Joshua and Wladimir Klitschko walked to the ring at Wembley Stadium seemed otherworldly, like something out of Star Wars. Lights were flashing. Music was blaring. Ninety thousand fans were in a frenzy. There was a WOW factor to it all.
Joshua was a better than 2-to-1 betting favorite. He’d weighed in at 250 pounds, one pound more than his previous high. Klitschko weighed in at 240¼, his lowest since fighting Ruslan Chagaev at the same weight eight years ago.
As the fighters waited for the opening bell, Joshua looked relaxed and focused. “I knew the significance of this fight before I took it,” he’d said three days earlier. “If I didn’t want to deal with this pressure. I would have taken another route.”
Early in the promotion, Klitschko had told the media, “It’s a perfect time for us to fight. In three years, Anthony will be too good, and I will be too old.”
Joshua was already too good. And Klitschko was already too old.
Klitschko fought tentatively in round one, and Joshua was cautious. In the second stanza, Anthony moved into aggressor mode. For the next few rounds, his confidence increased, and he appeared willing to fight for three minutes a round while Klitschko wanted only sporadic engagements.
Because of Joshua’s size and ability, it was one of the few times in Wladimir’s career that he was unable to manhandle his opponent in clinches.
Round five was a time-capsule round reminiscent of round ten in the first fight between Evander Holyfield and Riddick Bowe. Joshua jumped on Klitschko at the opening bell, bounced a glancing right hand off Wladimir’s ear, followed with a hook up top, and unloaded a barrage of punches.
Klitschko had been on the canvas eleven times as a pro. Twenty-seven seconds into round five, it was twelve.
Wladimir rose on unsteady legs with a nasty cut above his left eye. But he fought back, and, halfway through the round, landed a hook of his own that staggered Joshua and turned the tide. Now Joshua was holding on. Anthony made it to the bell and won the round on the judges’ scorecards because of the knockdown. But he looked exhausted. Klitschko had gotten the better of him in those three minutes.
Klitschko’s newfound dominance continued in round six, escalating at the 1:07 mark when he drilled Joshua with a straight right hand.
“He got hit with the biggest punch of his career,” Rob McCracken acknowledged afterward.
Joshua went down with a thud and got up slowly. He looked like a swimmer who was about to drown. Now he was the fighter struggling to survive.
For the remainder of round six, Klitschko kept trying to measure Joshua with his jab preparatory to throwing a fight-ending right hand. If he’d focused more on hitting Joshua with the jab, Anthony might not have been standing for long.
Klitschko was the aggressor again in round seven, with Joshua still in survival mode. But like Anthony in round five, Wladimir couldn’t finish his man.
In round eight, the pendulum swung back in Joshua’s favor. Klitschko was tiring. Minute by minute, Joshua was working his way back into the fight.
“Boxing is about character,” Anthony said afterward. “When you go into the trenches, that’s when you find out who you really are.”
And equally important, as Joshua later noted, “As the rounds went on, I was learning things about Wladimir.”
By round nine, Joshua was in control again and Klitschko was starting to look like an old fighter.
Round ten was more of the same.
At the start of round eleven, Joshua came out aggressively and landed a right hand that put Wladimir in trouble. But Anthony had learned from his near-death experience in round five. This time, his assault was more measured.
Klitschko has never fought well on the inside. Over the years, his inside game has consisted largely of clinching to immobilize opponents and leaning on them to tire them out. In earlier rounds, Joshua had been able to go inside and punch to the body more effectively than Wladimir’s previous opponents were able to. Now he went inside again.
One minute ten seconds into round eleven, a vicious right uppercut followed by a left hook up top dropped Klitschko hard. A minute later, Wladimir was down again, courtesy of another right uppercut and left hook. He pulled himself to his feet with an assist from the ring ropes and was being pummeled in a corner when referee David Fields intervened with thirty-five seconds left in the stanza to spare him from further punishment.
“Two gentlemen fought each other,” Klitschko said afterward. “The best man won. Anthony was better today than I. It’s really sad that I didn’t make it tonight. But all the respect to Anthony.”
It was the sort of fight that boxing needs more of. A grand stage, high stakes, good fighters, and a dramatic ebb and flow that made it special. The fact that Joshua was forced to climb off the canvas made his triumph more memorable and, in some ways, more impressive than if he’d ended matters more easily in round five.
Joshua
showed that he’s mentally strong. He didn’t crumble when a lesser fighter would have. He fought through adversity after suffering a hurting knockdown and prevailed; something that many fighters, including Mike Tyson, were unable to do. He’s an exciting fighter. He can hurt an opponent with either hand at any time. In some ways, he’s reminiscent of the young Riddick Bowe. A big heavyweight with power who has a mean uppercut and knows how to fight on the inside.
One can argue that Klitschko at his best would have beaten this version of Joshua. But if Anthony continues to improve, he may well become a better fighter than Wladimir ever was. It will be interesting to see how much better Joshua gets and whether he’ll be able to sustain that level of excellence over an extended period of time.
“I’m only going to improve,” Joshua said after conquering Klitschko. “I’m not perfect, but I’m trying. I’m learning so much and I’ve got ten years left in this game. So we’ll have fun together.”
As for the significance of Joshua-Klitschko; prior to the fight, the promotion kept throwing around numbers like Wladimir wanted to win this number belt and that number title fight. Boxing fans were told that beating Joshua would make Klitschko a “three-time world heavyweight champion,” separating him from the likes of Ruslan Chagaev, Nikolai Valuev, John Ruiz, Chris Byrd, and Herbie Hide (each of whom had only two “championship” reigns). There was a lot of talk about “passing the torch” from one champion to another.
But Klitschko didn’t have a torch to pass. Tyson Fury took it from him seventeen months ago. Joshua didn’t beat the reigning heavyweight champion. He beat a former champion who hadn’t won a fight in more than two years. And forget the belts. In today’s world, they’re marketing tools, not much more. On paper, Joseph Parker is also a “world heavyweight champion.”
What’s important is that Joshua-Klitschko was contested for the right be called the best heavyweight in the world. With his triumph, Joshua moved from being a belt holder to a champion. Right now, he’s the number one heavyweight in boxing.
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