Roy Jones Jr watched Anthony Joshua hit the canvas twice and immediately thought of Andre Ward. He said so on Ward’s own show.
Joshua was floored twice inside the opening round by Kristian Prenga in Jeddah on July 25 before knocking him out in the second. Speaking to All The Smoke Boxing, which Ward co-hosts, Jones said a different opponent would have closed it out there.
When AJ went down two times in that first round, I said ‘holy smokes, if this was Andre Ward, this fight may be over right now.'
He gave Joshua the credit for what happened next.
I got to give kudos to him because he came back after those two knockdowns, and he got dude out of there in the second round, but immediately I thought ‘if this is Andre, I don’t think he gets out of the first round. This would be a problem right now.'
The hypothetical has an obvious hole in it. Ward retired in 2017 with a 32-0 record and titles at super middleweight and light heavyweight, and never fought above 175 pounds. Joshua walks around at heavyweight. Ward has floated a Joshua fight in the past, though nothing was ever close to real.
Jones has form for putting himself and people around him into Joshua’s business. He said a few years ago that he could train Joshua to beat Oleksandr Usyk. He also mentored Ward as a teenager, bringing him along to camps to show him what the life looked like, which is part of why the name comes to him first.
Joshua turns to Tyson Fury in November. Contracts are signed. The venue is still being argued over, with Madison Square Garden the frontrunner and Eddie Hearn pointing to a contract clause requiring the fight to be held in Britain.
