‘I’m just focused on smashing his head in’ – Anthony Joshua looks forward to Deontay Wilder fight following brutal KO win over Robert Helenius
Deontay Wilder’s coach has revealed exactly what the American heavyweight thought of Anthony Joshua’s latest win.
AJ brutally stopped Robert Helenius in the seventh round of their fight at the O2 Arena in London on Saturday night to set up a money-spinning showdown with Wilder in January.
Last October, ‘The Bronze Bomber’ beat Helenius in a similarly vicious fashion but needed less than three minutes to get the job done in his comeback fight.
The former WBC heavyweight champion is yet to publicly react to Joshua’s first KO win since 2020 but, according to his long-time trainer Malik Scott, he couldn’t be happier.
“He [Wilder] was like, ‘Yeah, we needed that,’” Scott told October Red.
“We both said the same thing because at first it was looking like it was getting ready to go the distance, so when a knockout came, I called him on FaceTime and he was like, ‘Phew! I’m glad he got that done, we needed it done just like that.’”
“So, we’re both satisfied, the fight is bigger to me than it was because of the knockout.
“Shoutout to AJ to going out there and getting the job done in the [seventh] round. Most of all, really shoutout to Robert Helenius. It takes a lot of courage to get in that ring with real killers, especially on short notice.
“He just fought Deontay last October, had one fight back and now he was right back in there fighting Anthony Joshua.”
Scott says the plan is for his man to have a tune-up fight against a yet-to-be-decided opponent before squaring off against Joshua in Saudi Arabia at the beginning of 2024.
Scott started training Wilder for the Fury trilogy fight, and the pair have stayed together since.
‘The Bronze Bomber’ is expected to take a tune-up fight before facing Joshua.
“He’ll be more than ready for a January showdown,” he added.
“Last time I checked with Deontay and the last time we had a conversation about fighting, opponents, or anything like that, we were looking for something for October.
“Hopefully we can lock in an opponent and from there we’ll go and knock out AJ in January.
“[Andy] Ruiz doesn’t want to fight Deontay so we’re looking for somebody else, someone who really wants to fight and take a chance and unfortunately somebody else who is going to be knocked out.”
It remains to be seen if Joshua will opt to take another fight in 2023, or sit on the sidelines and wait for his £60million clash with Wilder to come to fruition.
