Dillian Whyte claims Anthony Joshua has deserted the “aggressive” style that made him exciting and popular and insists the world champion will not be the same fighter again.
Joshua was knocked out by Andy Ruiz last year but refined his style to a more cautious one in order to gain revenge and recapture his belts.
But Whyte claims Joshua will not revert back to who he was before and has pointed to history as a sign of what’s to come.
“We’ve seen this before – Lennox Lewis was an aggressive fighter on the front foot but got knocked out by Hasim Rahman, then changed his style,” Whyte told Sky Sports. ”People forget Wladimir Klitschko was one of the most aggressive heavyweights for a long time, but he got done by Ross Puritty, Corrie Sanders and Lamon Brewster then changed his style.
“Joshua will be the same. Tall heavyweights start their careers very aggressively, but then? Even Deontay Wilder, when he was clocked a couple of times by Luis Ortiz, thought ‘I’m just going to wait’. We have seen this time and time again in history, and it’s always the same.”
After suffering a knockout loss to Joshua in 2015, Whyte believes he has developed into a superior fighter who would be able to follow the blueprint revealed by Andy Ruiz last year.
“I would come out and set about him,” Whyte claimed when asked how a rematch would unfold. “The first time we fought, we were amateurs. The second time [my then-trainer] Johnathon Banks told me: ‘Box him, stretch him out, let him gas’.
“That was the wrong strategy, now I look back. I should have been more aggressive in the early rounds because while I was boxing, he was being aggressive. Then I got tired. So I should have just gone for him. If I fought him again, I would press him.”
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