Former four division champion Roy Jones Jr. would like to see Anthony Joshua face an opponent who doesn’t have the punching power attributes of Deontay Wilder.
Joshua returned to the ring earlier this month, with a twelve round decision win over Jermaine Franklin.
It was Joshua’s first win since 2020. The recent win helped him bounce back after back to back decision losses to unified heavyweight champion Oleksandr Usyk.
Joshua has now been discussing the scenario of facing Wilder at the end of the year in the Middle East.
“It’s a very tough fight for him. I love AJ to death and I think he’s a great fighter. But his issue right now is dealing with punches coming back at him, so you don’t want to fight Wilder,” Jones told ID Boxing.
“Those punches that will be coming at you from him are different to anybody else in the division, so he’s got to go get that taken care of before he goes in front of Wilder.”
The fight with Franklin was Joshua’s first bout with new head trainer Derrick James.
Joshua seemed to be a bit gun-shy when facing Franklin.
Jones would like to see Joshua and James gain more experience in their working relationship.
“Sometimes it takes time for a fighter and trainer to get their whole aspect together. Apparently, that hasn’t happened straight away, but if they stay together, then maybe they’ll finally get some continuity, but they definitely didn’t get any in that first fight,” Jones said.
“Hopefully they get better as they go, it sometimes takes bit of time for things to kick in for a fighter and they get on the same page. So hopefully in the next couple of fights they’ll get better and start to gel, because in that fight they didn’t gel much at all.”