MMA & Boxing 20: D.C. Stands For "Double Champ"

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

Just now, ljkeane said:

 Alright then. If you don’t want to talk about it seriously I won’t bother then.

Did Joshua not avoid Wilder for years?

Seriously, he dodged real fights on the same order Mayweather did. Joshua has only taken fights he thought he could easily win for ages now. And it's funny that it finally bit him in the ass.

[ljkeane]

2 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

Did Joshua not avoid Wilder for years?

Seriously, he dodged real fights on the same order Mayweather did. Joshua has only taken fights he thought he could easily win for ages now. And it's funny that it finally bit him in the ass.

Mate, that's seriously some childish bollocks. It's professional boxing, you don't take fights were there's no upside for shits and giggles. Especially in the heavyweight division were you can get knocked out by any sort of serious contender if you get tagged. He was never going to fight Wilder once Wilder didn't beat Fury before he fought Fury, that would have been a very stupid thing to do.

As I said Fury's a massive dickhead so I'd be very surprised if he wasn't at least as much at fault as Joshua's camp for their fight not coming together.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

Just now, ljkeane said:

Mate, that's seriously some childish bollocks. It's professional boxing, you don't take fights were there's no upside for shits and giggles. Especially in the heavyweight division were you can get knocked out by any sort of serious contender if you get tagged. He was never going to fight Wilder once Wilder didn't beat Fury before he fought Fury, that would have been a very stupid thing to do.

As I said Fury's a massive dickhead so I'd be very surprised if he wasn't at least as much at fault as Joshua's camp for their fight not coming together.

Because he didn't want to get his ass kicked. Wilder would have dragged him, and you and I both know it.

Joshua is a dodger. He doesn't want to take the top fights because he knows he's a tier below. Last night proved that. 

[ljkeane]

Yeah, ok. Seriously, this time I'm done. This is stupid.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

1 minute ago, ljkeane said:

Yeah, ok. Seriously, this time I'm done. This is stupid.

Why? You're the one arguing, essentially, that Andy Murray deserves to be in the same conversation as the real big three. Joshua is scared of the other two dominate fighters in his division, and has dodged them whenever he could. And then he got rocked. He's a B+ fighter and always has been. 

[polishgenius]

Think you're being harsh there Tywin. Apart from anything else, can't say Joshua has been ducking Fury when he literally signed to fight him last month but the a judge ruled that Covid meant it hadn't been reasonable to claim Wilder's right to a rematch had lapsed so Fury had to do that first. And when that happened, he signed to fight Usyk, the most dangerous possible opponent, when he had no contractual or afaik sanctioning-body obligation to and probably could have made more money from the UK crowd rematching Dillian Whyte or giving Joe Joyce a shot. And there wasn't really a time before this that Joshua could have realistically fought Fury, since he's spent the entire time between beating Klitschko in 2015 either in a cocaine-fuelled depressive breakdown or locked in to fight Wilder. I never thought Joshua had much chance of winning that, but it's just plain wrong to say Joshua's ducked it or doesn't want it. 

The Wilder fight could have happened, but they're equally at fault for it not coming together, so it seems harsh to lay that all on Joshua - and Fury aside, Joshua's list of opposition is much better than Wilder's is. 

Usyk would beat Wilder like a penny drum btw. There was nothing in last night's fight that made me think AJ-Fury isn't still a 50/50. If anything Joshua did some things better than I thought he would, because although he started slow and faded out, in the middle rounds he made some little adjustments that made Usyk work to get around him and find the space spots for his attacks, and I didn't think Joshua was capable of doing that in that way. 

 

 

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

@polishgenius,

I'm not going to claim to be a close follower of boxing, but it's been clear that Joshua has been dodging Wilder for a few years now. That was the fight everyone wanted to see in 2018 or so and one of the two fighters clearly said no, and it wasn't Wilder. 

[polishgenius]

2 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

That was the fight everyone wanted to see in 2018 or so and one of the two fighters clearly said no, and it wasn't Wilder. 

 

It absolutely was Wilder as much as Joshua. Wilder threw out the highly public 50million offer and that seems very good for Joshua at first glance and Joshua turning it down is weird, but reportedly it involved Joshua giving up all promotional and organisational control and Joshua simply can't do that- not even just on a practical sense that it wouldn't have been sensible even with that much money on the table to let Wilder control the location, judges, etc etc with no say of his own, which would be true enough on its own, but he has promotional partners he has deals with he needs to satisfy. 

And then Wilder refused to negotiate any further. 

So both were playing games and trying to make it seem like they wanted it and the other guy didn't. Wilder played that game better but that doesn't mean he was actually more interested in making the fight. Neither were actually pushing for it very hard, neither wanted to give up what they thought was an advantageous negotiation position and both had alternatives on the go. 

[BigFatCoward]

4 hours ago, Tywin et al. said:

Right. He's been running from them. Because he knows he's not the top heavyweight.

Fury is head and shoulders above anyone (maybe other than Usyk). Wilder is a dogshite boxer and he has been humiliated by Fury for about 95% of the rounds they have boxed. 

And to say Joshua has dodged real fights when Wilder has fought the biggest collection of tin cans in heavyweight history is bizzare. 

[polishgenius]

Yeah, Wilder has fought Fury for a total of fifty-eight and a half minutes and he's had the advantage for about thirty seconds of that. Even when he fucking flattened Fury in the final round of the first one, Fury was clowning him right after he got up. 


I'd say Usyk is definitely a better boxer technically than Fury too, but it's not clear if he's better enough to also make up for the advantages in size. 

[Quijote Light]

I’m not going to claim to be a close follower of boxing, but I am going to make a claim that is pure speculation and state it as fact. 

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

59 minutes ago, polishgenius said:

 

It absolutely was Wilder as much as Joshua. Wilder threw out the highly public 50million offer and that seems very good for Joshua at first glance and Joshua turning it down is weird, but reportedly it involved Joshua giving up all promotional and organisational control and Joshua simply can't do that- not even just on a practical sense that it wouldn't have been sensible even with that much money on the table to let Wilder control the location, judges, etc etc with no say of his own, which would be true enough on its own, but he has promotional partners he has deals with he needs to satisfy. 

And then Wilder refused to negotiate any further. 

So both were playing games and trying to make it seem like they wanted it and the other guy didn't. Wilder played that game better but that doesn't mean he was actually more interested in making the fight. Neither were actually pushing for it very hard, neither wanted to give up what they thought was an advantageous negotiation position and both had alternatives on the go. 

My understanding is that Wilder offered to fight Joshua in the UK and he said no, maybe next time, and that's how Wilder vs. Fury ended up happening. Everything I listened to and read suggested that it was specifically Joshua's camp that did not want the fight.

1 hour ago, BigFatCoward said:

Fury is head and shoulders above anyone (maybe other than Usyk). Wilder is a dogshite boxer and he has been humiliated by Fury for about 95% of the rounds they have boxed. 

And to say Joshua has dodged real fights when Wilder has fought the biggest collection of tin cans in heavyweight history is bizzare. 

I'm convinced Fury has a skull similar to Homer Simpson. You could hit that man with a baseball bat and it would be like a fly landed on him.

[polishgenius]

36 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

My understanding is that Wilder offered to fight Joshua in the UK and he said no, maybe next time, and that's how Wilder vs. Fury ended up happening. Everything I listened to and read suggested that it was specifically Joshua's camp that did not want the fight.

 

 

I'm not saying that Joshua made any extra effort to make the fight back then, just that you can't really trust Wilder's claims about efforts to make it either. Wilder's strongly hinted since then that he did turn down Joshua's counter-offer to fight Fury instead despite claiming at the time he agreed to everything Joshua offered. Which wasn't duckery either, they were just playing power and PR games and both went more easily solveable routes. It's boxing politics, it sucks, but it's not ducking coz you know you can't win, necessarily, and I don't think it was the case here on the part of either.


On Fury- he has a decent chin but more importantly, he has insane recovery. Like, Wilder knocked him out, there's little question of that, but he woke up straight away and recovered as soon as he stood up.

 

 

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

43 minutes ago, polishgenius said:

 

 

I'm not saying that Joshua made any extra effort to make the fight back then, just that you can't really trust Wilder's claims about efforts to make it either. Wilder's strongly hinted since then that he did turn down Joshua's counter-offer to fight Fury instead despite claiming at the time he agreed to everything Joshua offered. Which wasn't duckery either, they were just playing power and PR games and both went more easily solveable routes. It's boxing politics, it sucks, but it's not ducking coz you know you can't win, necessarily, and I don't think it was the case here on the part of either.

I guess that's fair. Both sides want to spin it in their favor. I'm just of the opinion that if it came down to it Wilder would show up at the fight and Joshua wouldn't. He seems like a massive frontrunner who doesn't want to take many hard fights, which is a shame because I think he's a better boxer than Wilder, but the latter has possibly the most power of anyone doing it since Tyson.

Quote

On Fury- he has a decent chin but more importantly, he has insane recovery. Like, Wilder knocked him out, there's little question of that, but he woke up straight away and recovered as soon as he stood up.

He's like the Undertaker sitting up after getting hit with a finisher. 

[polishgenius]

28 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

a better boxer than Wilder, but the latter has possibly the most power of anyone doing it since Tyson.

 

I'd say Wilder is a harder one-punch hitter than Tyson, though Tyson was obviously orders of magnitude better at consistently landing his power.



In any case, while you can certainly make the argument that Joshua was less keen on Wilder, he did take on Usyk, and as I say he did sign for Fury, so he does take hard fights at least sometimes...


Usyk's a magician sometimes. And a loveable lunatic, although he's just admitted he's an Elon Musk superfan so he's gone down in my estimation when he said that.


I do hope Fury wins in a couple weeks, so we can get Fury/Usyk. 

[polishgenius]

I went on my mate's/site's podcast to ramble some about this fight.

[BigFatCoward]

I hope that's the end of that. I wonder what he does now with Joshia taking the rematch v Usyk. 

Not watched it yet but it sounds like a bit of a classic. 

[polishgenius]

5 hours ago, BigFatCoward said:

I wonder what he does now with Joshia taking the rematch v Usyk. 

 

He's mandated to fight the winner of Wallin vs Whyte, so I assume that'll happen to avoid giving the belts up.


It was a cracking fight. Wilder took another beating but he gave Fury trouble along the way.




Also worth looking up is Cheeseman vs Williamson from the British card earlier in the day, that was awesome. Actually I gather all four of the big British fights were fun, though I've not seen the BT Sport card yet. Seeing Anthony Fowler get chinned was satisfying.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

On 9/26/2021 at 2:20 PM, polishgenius said:

 

I'd say Wilder is a harder one-punch hitter than Tyson, though Tyson was obviously orders of magnitude better at consistently landing his power.



In any case, while you can certainly make the argument that Joshua was less keen on Wilder, he did take on Usyk, and as I say he did sign for Fury, so he does take hard fights at least sometimes...


Usyk's a magician sometimes. And a loveable lunatic, although he's just admitted he's an Elon Musk superfan so he's gone down in my estimation when he said that.


I do hope Fury wins in a couple weeks, so we can get Fury/Usyk. 

This post aged very well. Sounds like there was a hell of a fight last night, but in the end Fury's ability to just consistently land more shots is what won the day in an 11 round slobber knocker. Wilder had to have thought it was in the bag after the second fourth round knockdown, but Fury just gets up over and over again.

[polishgenius]

I wrote a piece/breakdown on it if anyone's interested.