“His Legs Have Gone” Carl Froch Delivers Honest Verdict On Deontay Wilder vs Anthony Joshua

Carl Froch has spoken about the potential heavyweight clash between two former heavyweight world champions, Anthony Joshua and Deontay Wilder.

Both of these big men are huge punchers who have knocked out a combined 68 opponents out of the 81 men they have faced

However, when Joshua last fought back in September 2024, it was he who was stopped by then IBF champion Daniel Dubois, having rebuilt well following back-to-back losses to Oleksandr Usyk that left him without any belts in 2022.

Wilder suffered defeat twice to Tyson Fury out of the three times they fought, and then went on to lose to Zhilei Zhang and Joseph Parker. He got back to winning ways back in June when he beat Tyrell Herndon and is now making one last push for world honours.

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Joshua is also set to return following an elbow injury and is looking to get back into world title contention, potentially against someone like Martin Bakole who he has been linked with, though a fight with Wilder could also make sense.

Someone who has been extremely vocal about Joshua and Wilder over the years is former super-middleweight king Froch, who has again weighed in with a breakdown on how the bout may go.

“I’m not interested in seeing Wilder fighting again from what I’ve seen. His punching power seems to be gone, his legs seem to be gone as well, when he gets clipped he struggles. I just don’t see why these fighters need to carry on and destroy their legacy and ruin it. That’s AJ and Wilder. I don’t think these fighters should be fighting anymore.”

Eddie Hearn revealed this week that Joshua’s return will be a carefully chosen one before bigger fights in 2026, meaning his next fight is unlikely to be against Wilder.

Speaking on his own YouTube Channel, Froch admitted that he thinks that the fight is now well past its sell-by date

Anthony Joshua keeps getting disrespected as boxing legacy is now in question

Nothing is going the way Anthony Joshua wants it to, at least in recent times. Following his shocking loss to Andy Ruiz Jr. in 2019, AJ suffered back-to-back losses to the now-invincible Oleksandr Usyk. Joshua seemed to get back in form with four straight wins, but then suffered a brutal setback, getting knocked out by Daniel Dubois in the fifth round a year ago at Wembley Stadium.

For 2025, Joshua wanted to get back to big fights despite the Dubois loss. A mega bout against Tyson Fury seemed like a sure thing, but The Gypsy King remains “retired” and Joshua is in limbo. While the rest of his boxing career is up in the air, his legacy is also being questioned now.

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Anthony Joshua ranked 49th in Boxing News’ Power 50 list

Boxing News came out with a list of the Top 50 most powerful figures in the sport at the moment. Joshua came in at No. 49, almost missing out on the list entirely. That ranking has enraged a member of Dubois’ team, manager Sam Jones. Back in August, Jones joined Dubois’ team in an advisory role. When he caught wind of the list, Jones became enraged.

“Anthony Joshua at #49 is an insult, mate. He’s top five, top 10. The least you can put him is top 10. He’s carried British boxing – with Tyson Fury as well, Tyson’s been huge as well – but Anthony Joshua could pack a stadium out now if he wanted to. That’s influence on British boxing, that’s called influence. AJ, you can’t disrespect him like that…The AJ one is baffling.”

There’s no doubt that Joshua still has the name power to sell out a stadium. In Jones’ eyes, that is enough to put him much, much higher on the list. It’s clear that Joshua’s legacy in the eyes of many has been tainted a bit over the past half-decade. He simply isn’t considered the larger than life figure he once was.

‘He’ll finish you with a sledgehammer’: What it’s really like to get punched by Anthony Joshua

There’s a comparison of hitting something with a sledgehammer, or hitting something with a normal hammer a lot of times – you know, like when you hit a nail,” Frazer Clarke says.

So, which comparison applies to getting punched by Anthony Joshua? Well, both, it turns out.

“[The latter] is what it is with Joshua, then he’ll finish you off with a sledgehammer on the last shot,” Clarke tells The Independent. “Boom!”

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Clarke knows what he is talking about, not just as an experienced boxer – unbeaten so far in his professional career – but as one who has first-hand experience of Joshua’s punching power. Clarke, 31, spent years training with “AJ” and followed his fellow Briton’s Olympic triumph at London 2012 with a medal of his own at Tokyo 2020.

“To be fair, this is probably the longest time in my boxing career that I’ve not been hit by Anthony Joshua,” the bronze medalist says. “I think the main reasons are that he boxed a southpaw [Oleksandr Usyk] over a period of about two years, and before that, he boxed Andy Ruiz Jr, whose dimensions were different, then there was Kubrat Pulev [while] I was preparing for the Olympics. So, it’s been a while.”

Still, it is not a sensation that slips from the memory.

“It’s not nice,” Clarke says unironically. “It’s not nice being hit by any heavyweight, but…”

But there is a misconception about Joshua, according to Clarke.

“You only have to look at Anthony Joshua, the man is made of muscle – he has muscles coming out of places where muscles shouldn’t be – but when people think about Joshua punching, what they don’t realise is… it’s not the one punch. He’s actually a really good combination puncher, and a fast puncher.

“When he gets the opportunity, he punches hard and often, and that’s almost worse than one single shot. You can prepare for a single shot – you can sort of brace on impact – but what you can’t prepare for is two, three, four shots from different angles.”

Indeed, watching all 22 knockouts from Joshua’s 25 professional wins confirms Clarke’s point. Joshua, 33, has often been criticised for a perceived lack of ring IQ and versatility, but when the former two-time heavyweight champion begins nudging that nail, he does so with speed and from all angles, before hauling out the sledgehammer.

Hector Alfredo Avila was admittedly toppled by a lone left hook in 2014. Charles Martin, similarly, was sent sprawling into a dimension with which he was entirely unfamiliar, courtesy of a piston right cross in 2016; the only set-up on that occasion was a feinted hook. With his most recent KO, in 2021, Joshua put down Kubrat Pulev for good with a sharp right straight.

That knockout of Pulev, however, only arrived after Joshua had dropped the veteran numerous times with a variety of punches in a series of combinations. Furthermore, every other finish was crafted with shots from both wings, often aimed not only to crack the cranium but also to brutalise the body. Even Joshua’s signature knockout of Wladimir Klitschko in 2017 was a result of AJ swarming the Ukrainian against the ropes, rather than the legend being finished by that famous uppercut – which actually came moments before the stoppage.

In any case, Joshua’s vaunted power may not even be his greatest asset.

“He’s the hardest worker in the room, the most determined person in the room,” Clarke says. “To train with him is a pleasure. But also, what I’ve taken from him the most over the last few years is: my goal is to lead a camp like him, from the nutrition to the resting… We all want to be at a level where we can have our own chef, [for example], and I think he’s really honed in on investing in himself.”

With the help of a personal chef and nutrition team, Joshua operates as professionally as any boxer, with his well-crafted heavyweight frame also requiring 5,000 calories a day, as he revealed before fighting Alexander Povetkin, and a lack of cheese, gluten and white rice. “The first thing I do in the morning is drink a litre of water; that helps me get my metabolism going,” Joshua told GQ at the time. “I’ll have some fruit, so it’s not too heavy for my stomach. I’ll then have a proper breakfast, which is what most people have for lunch because I’m eating at around 11am – rice, chicken, vegetables and sweet potatoes. Sometimes, I’ll switch it up, and have pork instead.

“If I want a snack, it’ll be either yoghurt and honey or meringues. By dinner, I’ll have completed all of my main training sessions, so I’ll have red meat or fish: steak or salmon with pasta, whole grain rice or quinoa, and vegetables. I do allow myself to indulge every once in a while, even when I’m training. I’m lucky enough to have a trainer who prepares homemade protein bars and protein shakes for me. I may also have something like a mousse or a yoghurt.”

That level of precision and dedication, as Clarke notes, is “what you need to do to get the best out of yourself, especially at world level”.

For Clarke, getting the best out of himself also involved taking the worst punishment that Joshua could offer.