Can Jermaine Franklin pull an Andy Ruiz against Anthony Joshua?
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Jermaine Franklin probably won’t upset Anthony Joshua on Saturday at O2 Arena in London.
That’s the opinion of the oddsmakers, who have made Joshua around a 9-1 favorite to win the heavyweight fight. And no fan or pundit with any knowledge of the sport would argue with them, at least not vociferously.
But could they be wrong?
Joshua (24-3, 22 KOs) was on the unfortunate end of a massive upset only five fights ago, when Andy Ruiz Jr. put him down four times and stopped him in seven rounds. Ruiz was a bigger underdog than Franklin.
The former unified champion isn’t exactly at the top of his game, having gone 2-3 in his last five fights. He’s coming off back-to-back losses to former undisputed cruiserweight champion Oleksandr Usyk, who won decisions in both fights.
And Franklin (21-1, 14 KOs) showed us something in his last fight. The 29-year-old native of Saginaw, Michigan, lost a majority decision to longtime contender Dillian Whyte in November, his second fight after a 2½-year layoff during which he worked for a living.
Some observers – including Franklin – thought he was robbed but he received a nice consolation prize: a meeting with Joshua, one of the biggest names in the sport.
We’ll see whether Franklin has the ability and mental toughness to compete with a fighter of Joshua’s pedigree. However, it’s a good bet that he’ll be prepared physically.
He said he spent most of his training camp leading up to the Whyte fight shedding fat. For this bout, he entered camp in better physical condition, which allowed him to hone his fitness and focus more on strategy.
The 6-foot-2 Franklin weighed 257 pounds for the Whyte fight. Eddie Hearn, Joshua’s promoter, guessed that he could come in around 230 for Joshua, which could produce a quicker, more fluid fighter.
“The circumstances around this fight are very different,” Franklin said, according to The Associated Press. “For the Dillian fight, I was working a job before we got that phone call. I wasn’t in the gym.
“We took like five to seven weeks to get in shape for that fight. For the time I had, I did what I could. This time I’ve got more time to prepare and more time to get in shape.”
The fight with Whyte at the OVO Arena Wembley gave Franklin experience on a big stage in a foreign country, which will serve him well on Saturday. And he demonstrated with his solid performance that he wasn’t fazed.
He has also been calm and cool in the lead up to the fight with Joshua, as if he has taken part in many big fights. He’s confident.
“My confidence is always great,” he said Thursday at the final news conference before the fight. “You’re in the wrong business if you don’t truly believe in yourself. This isn’t the right game for you.
“You have to have … the utmost confidence. You just have to put faith in the work [you’ve done].”
The prognosticators expect Franklin to become a footnote, a stepping stone possibly leading to an all-British super fight between Joshua and titleholder Tyson Fury.
That’s what Ruiz was supposed to be, though. And we know what happened there. Joshua decided mid-fight that he couldn’t beat his opponent and signaled with his body language that he didn’t want to continue.
Franklin doesn’t have the track record of Ruiz but he has demonstrated that he’s a solid heavyweight. That fact and Joshua’s uneven performances suggest that the notion of an upset isn’t farfetched.
“I come from a place without a lot of possibilities,” he said. “I made it this far [so] anything is possible. … I believe I get my hand raised at the end of the fight.”
