Tuesday 19 May 2015 15:37, UK
Durable American Kevin Johnson will present Anthony Joshua with his first genuine test when the pair meet on May 30, says Glenn McCrory.
The Olympic heavyweight champion, 25, stopped Brazil's Raphael Zumbano Love inside two rounds on Saturday Fight Night to improve his record to 12 knockouts from 12 fights and now faces a step up against Johnson, live on Sky Sports Box Office.
Here is Glenn's verdict on the Kingpin conundrum...
The opponent was a lamb to the slaughter on Saturday. He didn't seem to have any offensive prowess whatsoever - I don't know how he'd accumulated 26 knockouts. It seemed like Love wanted to make peace with Anthony Joshua!
You can't blame AJ and he's great. I'm a big fan. I think he's terrific, but they've just got a bit of a problem on their hands because he's fought 12 very basic, easy opponents and never gone past three rounds.
Now, he's going to go in with a decent hardcore American who's never been stopped in Kevin Johnson.
Johnson has been the distance with Vitali Klitschko and comes with a little bit of fire in his belly. He looks in good shape, is saying the right things and doesn't look afraid, and why should he? He's been in with bigger, stronger more accomplished fighters than Joshua.
We've got a similar position as we had with David Price a couple of years ago. He'd been fed run-of-the-mill heavyweights and was suddenly put in with a guy who wasn't afraid, could take punches and would go back at him. He wasn't ready because he hadn't had that preparation.
I'm a little bit worried that Joshua's missing that. In 12 fights, you need to get something of a test. Yes he's good and we're all big fans. I just feel if Johnson takes him past six and starts rattling him around the chin, has he got the professionalism and experience to handle that? It's a doubt in my mind.
Price was found out in the amateurs and found out in the professionals. We would have answered more questions if Joshua was fighting him because he'd have had to defend the jab and be up against someone tall.
No disrespect to Price but I don't think he's going to be a world champion. The tough fighters will know now they can hit him on the whiskers and he'll go, so they've lost that fear.
Johnson is a man. So far, Joshua has only fought fighters of a certain level and I guarantee not one of them thought they were in with a chance of winning. The guy on Saturday didn't even look like he thought he was going to hit him. He didn't throw one punch in anger.
If Joshua has a tough fight and comes through to win on points, there's nothing wrong with that at all. You don't have to knock everybody out. Tyson didn't knock everybody out - James Tillis took him the distance in his early days and he learned an awful lot in that fight. I sparred with Tillis too and he taught me an awful lot!
Joshua is not the finished article and he's not going to knock out every single person he ever fights. That's just not going to happen. The reality is that somebody is going to stand there, grit their teeth and slap him back in the mouth, which is something we haven't seen yet. Johnson is the first genuine threat.
Specimen
I also notice when I see AJ on Twitter he's hanging off apparatus, lifting weights or climbing ropes. He wants to look the part and be a fine specimen but he doesn't want to try to be Conan the Barbarian! I know he's a great athlete but so was Frank Bruno but people will tell you he was too stiff.
Lennox Lewis was a far more fluid boxer because he wasn't really a weight lifter. I'm not saying he wasn't strong because he was - I can vouch for his strength! But he wasn't a weight-lifting kind of guy.
I am concerned because I want to see Anthony go all the way. I see him as a world champion and a great world champion.
He's coming under scrutiny now, as he will as he goes further and further. The world's press and fans will do that. He's done things like stick his tongue out a couple of times. I can understand the exuberance of winning and wouldn't want anyone to quell that, but he can't afford to lose his class.
So far, he's come across as classy and I just hope he can keep it together.
Having said all that, my prediction is still that Joshua will stop him. I think he's still good enough to become the first man to stop Kevin Johnson. It's a big shout and I think we'll see him hit on the chin for the first time, but I think he'll come through.
You can see Joshua has got a bit of steel in him. When Johnson said he was going to stop him, you saw it fired him up. That's what we need to see because nobody else has ever done that.
Jamie does us proud
I must say I thought Jamie McDonnell was superb in defending his WBA bantamweight title in Texas.
To box the way he did in front of such a top-class, credible and tough world champion, showed there was no gulf in class and he was actually better than Tomoki Kameda.
He rose to the occasion and proved himself as one of the top fighters in the world at that division. It was really quality stuff from Jamie.
The knockdown punch was the sort of clean punch that can be a match-winner. Sometimes you don't quite recover, the colly-wobbles creep in to your brain and you go out the next round and get done - but Jamie didn't do that.
After that early setback, he came out the next round, all guns blazing and put him back in his place so that's an excellent, excellent performance from McDonnell at the very highest level.
