Journalist Thomas Hauser is concerned about Anthony Joshua’s brain health after watching him get destroyed by a fifth round knockout by IBF heavyweight champion Daniel Dubois last Saturday night in London.
Thomas notes that at this point in his career, Joshua can no longer walk through fire, and he feels that continuing to fight puts his health at risk. Joshua (34) has already created generational wealth for his family.
Hauser feels former two-time heavyweight champion Joshua no longer has the same machinery he possessed at the height of his career when he rose from the canvas to defeat Wladimir Klitschko. He says he would like to see Joshua undergo a complete neurological examination by dr. Margaret Goodman received to examine his brain health.
Joshua probably won’t retire even if his brain didn’t give a clean bill of health from an MRI exam because he thinks he can still compete with the best, which of course he can’t. However, he begins to suspect.
If Joshua is crushed in the rematch with Dubois, he will probably retire after that defeat unless His Excellency Turki Alalshikh offers him a huge amount of money to fight Tyson Fury. Joshua won’t say no to a $100 million+ payday to fight what’s left of Fury after he was beaten a second time by Oleksandr Usyk on December 21st.
Did the referee help Joshua?
“I felt that the referee, Marcus McDonnell, did not do a good job of refereeing that fight. Intentionally or not, I felt he was skewing his decision-making in favor of (Joshua),” Thomas Houser said. secondst, speaking of the referee who worked the Anthony Joshua vs. Daniel Dubois fight last Saturday.
Hauser isn’t the only one who felt the referee helped Joshua survive against Dubois. Some fans on social media also felt the same way, believing that Joshua would have been knocked out much sooner without the referee.
“He never once warned him for holding, which AJ did throughout the fight when he got hit in the first round. He gripped and held,” Hauser said of the referee.
“You could say he had to hold on to survive, which I understand, but it’s still against the rules. But the referee never even warned him about it, and then without any prior warning he took a point away from Dubois for a low blow. Even with the referee tipping things in his favor, it was obviously not a good night for (Joshua).”
AJ probably would have been finished by Dubois in the second round if the referee had addressed his complaint because without it he would have been bombed out of existence. The end would have come quickly for Joshua, which might have been good for him. He wouldn’t have to take all the punishment he absorbed in rounds three, four and five.
Joshua Not The Same Fighter
“Joshua has reached a point in his career, and he’s been there for a while; he doesn’t have the ability to walk through fire and win,” Hauser said.” He did it against Wladimir Klitschko. He got hurt, he came back, and he won, but he was physically (2017) a much younger man and then psychologically younger.”
It is clear that Joshua can no longer handle a fight in which he has to deal with adversity. AJ’s promoter, Eddie Hearn, has been protecting him with soft matches since his second loss to Oleksandr Usyk, but he couldn’t do that anymore last night when he was thrown in with the dangerous predator Dubois, and we saw the result.
Hearn created Joshua with his skillful matchmaking, selecting many fighters such as Wladimir Klitschko, Alexander Povetkin and Kubrat Pulev when they were old. Joshua probably would have lost to all those fighters and more than Hearn looked like when they were still healthy and fully functioning,
“I just don’t like all the times AJ got hit in the head last night. It was shocking. It reminded me of the first Andy Ruiz fight,” Hauser said.
Hauser: AJ makes Eddie Hearn “Massive money“
“Every time AJ fights, Eddie Hearn makes a huge amount of money,” Hauser said. “There are people in AJ’s team who make a lot of money every time he fights. I don’t know what his physical condition is. I have never seen an MRI of AJ. I’m sure there will be people who will say he had a good MRI. I’d love it if he did a full neurological makeup with someone like Margaret Goodman.
“I was upset to see how he reacted after Dubois was hit hard the first time. I can only watch and cringe every time I see Anthony Joshua get hit in the head. The Joshua who got off the canvas to beat Wladimir Klitschko no longer exists. He no longer has the same machinery.
“I overrated AJ, and I underestimated Dubois. I hope AJ keeps his eye on the bottom line, and I’m not talking about finances, because I assume he has so much money now, lineage wealth for him, his children and his grandchildren one day. He has it all, and the bottom line is his health. Fighters don’t think the worst can happen to them, but sometimes it does,” Hauser said.
For anyone who assumed Joshua would beat Dubois, they didn’t look hard at the opposition he fought in his previous four fights after his mental meltdown following his second loss to Usyk in 2022.
All you had to do was look at who Hearn has matched Joshua against over the past two years and then observe AJ’s performance against Usyk to know what would happen if he got in there with Dubois.
It was all smoke and mirrors with Joshua and the naive public, who were too lazy to investigate who he was fighting. Hearn pulled the wool over the sheep’s eyes by creating a mirage, making them think Joshua was fully recovered after hitting four tomato cans. It was all fraud by the master.
