Former British heavyweight champion, David Price had advised Anthony Joshua to take another fight before jumping in with the major players in the division, particularly one man.
Price won an Olympic bronze medal at Beijing 2008 but didn’t reach the heights in the professional game that many fans were hopeful of.
Nevertheless, Price is well-respected for his success in the amateurs and for his run at the domestic level, which saw him win his first fifteen fights before back-to-back knockout defeats to Tony Thompson derailed his career.
In an interview with iD Boxing, Price suggested that Joshua’s performance against Jermaine Franklin wasn’t enough to rebuild his self-belief and advised him to take another fight before stepping into the ring with Deontay Wilder.
“He won’t have taken any confidence out of that win [against Franklin] and he needed to rebuild it, because you could see it in his performance and you could see it in his demeanour, he is not a man who is self-assured at the minute. He needs reassurance, and the best way to do that was to win in style, he didn’t, he won’t have felt like a victor.
Get him another fight, get him a big win or a big knockout, a bit of a showreel stoppage, then go into your Wilder fight, because he is the worst opponent that Anthony Joshua can face.
Wilder is the opposite from Joshua, when it comes to his demeanour and his mentality, he doesn’t care how he looks in the ring technically, all he cares about is doing what needs to be done. He might not look as pleasing on the eye as ‘AJ’, but he is looser and he is freer because he is not second-guessing everything, questioning or over-analysing.”
The promoter said he would like AJ to have a fight before then, but admitted that the people involved in the mega-fight end of year deal wouldn’t want to take that risk