Former two-time heavyweight champion Anthony Joshua is going receive a lot of verbal abuse in his upcoming fight with Jermaine Franklin.
The two will collide on April 1 at the O2 Arena in London.
Joshua will be looking to rebound after suffering back to back decision losses at the hands of IBF, IBO, WBA, WBO world champion Oleksandr Usyk.
Franklin will be looking for some redemption as well, after suffering a close points loss to Dillian Whyte in his last trip to the UK.
The once-beaten Franklin believes he did more than enough to secure the victory over Whyte – and some observers felt the same way.
Franklin is usually quite during the pre-fight build, but he intends to make things rough, verbally, once he faces Joshua in the ring.
“I talk trash in the ring but not before the fight. In the ring I might call him soft, or a p-ssy, I start my talk in the ring. Outside the ring I might not say much, but inside you might hear me tell him: ‘Your momma hits harder than you’. Trash talk outside the ring is not my persona, I do it in the ring, during the fight, in the clinches,” Franklin said to The Sun.
“I want to frustrate my opponent in the ring. I’m probably too silly to trash talk outside of it, I will make myself laugh and not be able to stop giggling. But my switch flicks in the ring and I get more ruthless. In my Dillian Whyte fight in November I called him weak. One time he hit me and I told him: ‘You’re too soft’.”
Despite the two defeats, Franklin expects to face the best Joshua possible.
He feels the London star is far from a finished product.
“I love the sport so — until someone can show me that AJ is finished — I will not question him, he has done too much. As a fighter, I cannot just turn on him when he is an Olympic gold medal winner who reigned as a world champion for a long time,” Franklin said.
“I take points off Joshua for losing to Usyk twice, because he was only a cruiserweight who moved up. But if Usyk never loses then AJ’s stock goes up. However, if Usyk gets beat in his next fight, then it will look bad on AJ. We jump the gun too much in this sport. It’s not like basketball or soccer, where once you are great, you are great. He is great, but I hope to be greater.”