Warning to Joshua

[ross]

Good points Ross

I know Joshua's cousin owns a Gym and is involved still and was involved in bulking AJ up years ago and even the sky sports team have picked up on this, he showed good hand speed before and definitely wants to keep that in his Arsenal.

Anyone else think this is a worry?

He was 230lb on his pro debut.

He is now 18lb heavier! Even for someone his size thats a lot of muscle to put on!

a 7 - 8% increase in weight in the 2-3 years after turning pro would seem normal to me for a guy of his stature. Fat heavyweights (like Fury was) you would expect them to decrease weight first (losing fat) before putting some weight back on (muscle building). Wlad was 220 in his first pro fight and two years later was 235. He was a bit younger than Joshua though but 2 years after that he was coming in at 245.Once hes not purely focusing on weight training and doing stamina work too hell be fine.

Your basing that weight increase on his total body weight. Its only his muscles that have got heavier, not his bones or organs. So then its a bigger percentage of muscle increase which is massive and will do nothing for him as a championship distance fighter.

I guarantee you after this fight or against someone who will make him work over the distance that his weight training will be brought up as a reason he has stamina problems over the distance. He fines doing the amateur distance but wait until hes made to work past 4 rounds. He will end up like Haye, Price and Bruno. To be a better fighter he will have to change trainers because its clear hes spending too much effort on body building. 18lb of muscle when you are already big is a big increase and thats not from circuits, sprints, bag work, sparring, even general weights etc, he has been trying to put muscle on amd I dont think its been for any operational reason, just for his ego but it will come back to bite him and hearn in the ass.

Like I said, they havent been building a good fighter, just a fan base who will pay for pay per views.