Anthony Joshua’s warm-up bout ahead of fighting Tyson Fury could be a grave error, warns Shane McGuigan.
Joshua is on course to box his great rival Fury later this year, but first will have a tune up contest against Kristian Prenga on July 25.
Joshua is returning to boxing after the ordeal of experiencing a tragic car accident in which two of his friends died.
He will use this next training camp and bout with Prenga to shed any ring rust and make sure he’s firing on all cylinders for the Fury fight.
But McGuigan, one of the UK’s top trainers, considers it a mistake.
“Training camps are lonely places. Boxing’s a hard old game and if you don’t need it for the money and you’re doing it for the enjoyment, and the enjoyment of the sport’s maybe not quite where it once was.
“I think you need your teeth to be stuck into a big challenge and that would have always been a Tyson Fury fight,” McGuigan told Sky Sports.
“I also think he’s a confidence fighter, that’s why he needs that extra fight beforehand.”
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But McGuigan reflected: “It’s him going through another training camp without people that used to be in his training camp. It’s going to be a horrible experience.
“I don’t know AJ as a person so I don’t know how much it’s affected him but I would imagine it’s been a huge blow for him emotionally and to go through a training camp without your friends and to be involved in just witnessing something so horrific.
“I think to change that experience you want a big fight and that is Tyson Fury. To do that only to go through the motions, to get a win, to go into another big fight, it’s exhausting and I think you have to take the bull by the horns.
“Is this going to make [him] a better fighter? No I don’t think so. Is it going to do anything for him? Not really. It’s just going to get him to be exposed to that training stimulus before the big one. But actually that could showcase a lot of cracks in what’s really going on.”
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Dillian Whyte gives his opinion on Anthony Joshua’s next fight against Kristian Prenga.
Fury potentially taking an interim bout of his own could be a risk to far too, with the long-awaited showdown with AJ finally beckoning next for him.
“I think he does it just to wind them up. Once again I don’t know Tyson Fury personally but it seems that way,” McGuigan said.
Fury and AJ have been similarly close to fighting before, only for Joshua to lose to Oleksandr Usyk in 2021, nixing what would then have been an undisputed world title fight with Fury.
McGuigan noted: “If Tyson Fury was in Joshua’s shoes I think he would take the fight straightaway and not the warm-up fight. Because I think he knows from the first time that it was agreed, everything was agreed, everything was on the table and they took that one fight extra with Usyk.
“They missed it and they would be stupid to miss it again,” he added. “Anything can happen in professional boxing. More injuries, head clashes, all of the other stuff that goes on. I think they should have just took it.”
Pre-fight mind games could become an issue too. It is still to be decided who will ring walk first and second, who will be the A-side or B-side.
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“It’s just egos at the end of the day. I think the reason they’re fighting is because of egos. That’s really what it is,” McGuigan said.
“Yes they’re fighting men and they want to give entertainment but I think it’s more to do with keeping their relevance and keeping themselves in the limelight in that sense as an athlete.
“They know that they’re not as good as they once were.
“It really doesn’t make a blind bit of difference who’s ring walking first, who’s left side of the poster,” McGuigan concluded.
“It all stems down to what’s going to go on in the 36 minutes when they step through the ropes and that’s what they should really be focused on. Not taking warm-up fights and who’s winning this battle and that battle.”
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