Outside Source
Joshua and Paul are set to trade leather on Friday on a Netflix card at the Kaseya Center in Miami, Florida. Joshua is expected to be the toughest test of Paul’s career so far. The former heavyweight world champion vows to live up to the expectations by taking Paul’s soul. Joshua explains that he can instinctively sense when an opponent starts to fade and capitalizes on it until they give up or get knocked out.
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“Jake is someone I got to beat mentally, because he is a mental person,” Joshua said to Paul at a recent press conference. “If I can take his soul and I can break his mentality, then I’ve broken Jake… It’s not just physical, I gotta take your soul in the ring… I’ve seen in fights, when I can see someone’s energy, frequency, leaving their body. And my goal is to do the same to you… When you’re fighting you can see that small glimmer of someone just about to start fading and you just keep exploiting that until some people give up, some people get knocked out… I wanna break him down spiritually and mentally.”
Pressure Points
While Joshua is a former two-time world heavyweight champion, Paul rose in the world of boxing by fighting fellow influencers and retired MMA fighters. Fans expect Joshua to make easy work of Paul, even ready to question the authenticity of the fight if it goes the distance. Paul believes Joshua has a lot of expectations to live up to, which will weigh him down if he loses the first couple of rounds.
“It’s funny because the pressure’s on you,” Paul said. “And when I win the first round and the second round, I think it’s gonna be you that starts to crumble. Because all the pressure’s on you. I’m fighting free, there’s no weight on my shoulder. I don’t have to prove anything. You have so much to prove. The whole boxing world’s like, ‘Two rounds or Joshua sucks.’”
Joshua (28-4) won four in a row after his trilogy loss to Oleksandr Usyk in 2022. However, the Englishman has since suffered a knockout loss to Daniel Dubois in his last outing in September 2024. Meanwhile, Paul (12-1) has finished seven of his 12 wins while only losing to Tommy Fury, Tyson Fury’s half brother.
This article first appeared at Recent News on Sherdog.com
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