Anthony Joshua is one of those fighters whose record will be looked upon much more kindly by future generations than he is while he's an active fighter and competing at the top of the heavyweight division. In the future, they'll see a big, athletic and powerful guy who started to box later in life than most but was at or near the top of his sport for more than a decade.
Joshua, the former unified heavyweight champion, will look for a third stint as heavyweight champion on Saturday when he faces champion Daniel Dubois for the IBF belt before 96,000 fans in Wembley Stadium in London. The fight is available on pay-per-view on PPV.com for only $19.99, with no subscription required, as well as on DAZN.
Joshua is 28-3 as a pro with 25 knockouts. He won the 2012 gold medal as a super heavyweight amid extraordinary pressure and expectations at the 2012 Olympic Games in London. He first won a version of the heavyweight title less than three full years into his professional career when he blew out Charles Martin in two rounds to win the IBF belt.
He added the WBA and WBO belts before losing in a stunning upset to Andy Ruiz in New York on June 1, 2019. He regained the belts in a rematch before losing them to Oleksandr Usyk.
A win over Dubois would begin Joshua's third reign as a heavyweight champion, something only Muhammad Ali, Evander Holyfield and Lennox Lewis have accomplished.
Joshua's signature win as a pro came on April 29, 2017, at Wembley when he stopped the great Wladimir Klitschko in a wild slugfest. That was Klitschko's final bout and he's gone on to be inducted into the International Boxing Hall of Fame.
HIs most significant wins other than Klitschko were over Andy Ruiz, Joe Parker and Alexander Povetkin, none of which comes close to carrying the weight of the victory over Klitschko.
It's often dangerous to evaluate a fighter's career before it's over. There's a good chance that Joshua will wind up facing Usyk again and Tyson Fury before he calls it a day. Without knowing what is to come, it's impossible to precisely place him.
Understand this, though: It's easy to rattle off heavyweights who fought 20, 25, 50 or more years ago and say definitively that they're better, more talented and more accomplished than Joshua. In some cases, it would be correct.
In no order and leaving out active fighters, let's consider Muhammad Ali, Joe Louis, Larry Holmes, George Foreman, Rocky Marciano, Joe Frazier, Lennox Lewis, Jack Johnson, Jack Dempsey, Evander Holyfield, Mike Tyson, Vitali Klitschko, Wladimir Klitschko and Riddick Bowe the best heavyweights ever.
Out of that group, who do we that Joshua would definitively defeat? Well, just on size, I'd say Louis, Marciano, Frazier and Dempsey. All of them were around or slightly under the 200-pound mark. Louis and Dempsey were over 6 feet, but Frazier and Marciano were under.
At 6 feet 6 and around 245 pounds, it just seems like Joshua physically would have been too much for them. Could they have landed a crushing shot on his chin to end it? Sure, but it seems a far better bet that Joshua would have kept them at the end of that massive jab and not allowed them to get inside and do damage.
Now, on the other end of the spectrum, which of the remaining fighters on that list would definitively have beaten Joshua? I saw there are four, and this is open to debate. But I'll say Ali, Holmes, Foreman and Lewis would have handled Joshua.
That leaves Johnson, Holyfield, Tyson, the Klitschko brothers and Bowe as uncertains. Joshua did defeat Wladimir Klitschko, but it was an end-of-the-line Klitschko he defeated. Could he have handled a prime Klitschko, who was a crushing puncher, when Klitschko was in the midst of that lengthy run of successful title defenses? That's a tough one. With Emanuel Steward in Klitschko's corner, I'd have to think a prime Klitschko would be favored, but it's impossible to say for sure.
Bowe had the size and the boxing skill to handle Joshua, but he wasn't always motivated so that's a question mark. Bowe beat Holyfield two of three times they fought and probably would have won all three were it not for the "Fan Man" in their 1993 bout gliding into the ring during the action. But Holyfield was tenacious as all get-out and would have fought fiercely.
So by examining those likely outcomes, it looks like Joshua at this stage is somewhere between 10 and 15 all-time. He has time to move, and if he defeats Dubois Saturday and then either Usyk or Tyson Fury (or both) down the line, it could improve his position.
Joshua has gotten a lot of accolades and made a ton of money in his career, but he's never been as appreciated as perhaps his skills suggest. The lack of really big-time wins beyond Klitschko certainly hurts his case, but if he beats Dubois and then either Fury or Usyk before he retires, history is going to look very kindly upon his career.
Mark Robinson/Matchroom
Anthony Joshua will be a three-time heavyweight champion if he defeats Daniel Dubois on Saturday.