What does Anthony Joshua have to do to arrest the tailspin he finds himself in?
Anthony Joshua faces a career-defining match-up against Oleksandr Usyk on August 20th in Saudi Arabia. As things stand, the Brit’s chances of regaining the heavyweight belts that he surrendered in September 2021 look slim. In short, Joshua has lost the aura that made him one of the most talked-about heavyweights of modern times with his previously revered fear factor all but gone.
Tellingly, the latest boxing betting UK odds for the year’s upcoming matches indicate that Joshua is no longer priced as the favorite when he fights. It has been a sudden and worrying decline but you can probably just about stop short of calling it a fall from grace. The good news is that the Englishman still has time to arrest this tailspin even if the Joshua vs Usyk 2 odds currently price him at odds of +170 to win in Jeddah. The worrying news, on the other hand, is that he has no other option but to beat Usyk in the Middle East. If Joshua is to lose again, the 32-year-old will likely be closer to retirement than the summit of the heavyweight division.
🇺🇦🇺🇦🇺🇦 pic.twitter.com/qRnp7FGDZP
— Alexander Usyk (@usykaa) June 29, 2022
Beating Usyk is a lot easier said than done, however, after the Ukrainian comprehensively outboxed Joshua in 2021 to show his undeniable quality. You could argue that whilst losing is never ideal, the manner of the defeat, in this case, would have left an even deeper mental scar on Joshua than the one he suffered against Andy Ruiz Jr at Madison Square Garden.
For all the shock of being beaten by Ruiz in 2019, boxing fans worldwide assumed that Joshua would avenge the loss he sustained in New York when the two went head-to-head in the rematch. Essentially, that’s exactly what Joshua did but this time around, that confidence in the Englishman’s ability to right the wrongs has severely wavered. Perhaps the most concerning factor is that the person whose confidence has reached an all-time low is in fact Joshua himself.
Submerged 🧊 pic.twitter.com/frzTTqX2Dy
— Anthony Joshua (@anthonyjoshua) July 7, 2022
With this in mind, you could say that Joshua first needs to recapture that champion’s mindset he had in 2019 before he makes his ring walk on August 20th. Of course, that alone may not be enough as there are still grave misgivings about the 32-year-old’s ability to outbox the very best in this division. It was evident against Usyk whose mature performance in their first fight eventually enabled him to unleash a ruthless beating on Joshua during the dying rounds. The Brit had thoroughly exhausted himself trying to outfox the Ukrainian. Simply put, that’s not Joshua’s style and it’s probably a bit too late in the day for Joshua to totally reinvent himself from a power-puncher to a streetwise performer.
Instead, Joshua needs to focus on the attributes he has which, in reality, center on him being the bigger and stronger man. If the Watford-born boxer is able to refresh his mindset, as well as bring back that blood and thunder that made him such a feared fighter, then he may just have enough to cause an upset in the desert.
