MORNING KOMBAT WITH LUKE THOMAS AND BRIAN CAMPBELL - 🚨 Anthony Joshua-Kubrat Pulev Instant Reaction

Episode Date: December 13, 2020

Brian Campbell is here to give his instant reaction to Anthony Joshua vs. Kubrat Pulev. What's next for Anthony Joshua? Was this exactly what Anthony Joshua needed? Brian breaks it all down here! --------------------------------- 'Morning Kombat’ is available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, Castbox, Google Podcasts, Bullhorn and wherever else you listen to podcasts.    For more Combat Sports coverage subscribe here: youtube.com/MorningKombat   Follow our hosts on Twitter: @BCampbellCBS, @lthomasnews, @MorningKombat    For Morning Kombat gear visit: store.sho.com   Follow our hosts on Instagram: @BrianCampbell, @lukethomasnews, @MorningKombat  To hear more from the CBS Sports Podcast Network, visit https://www.cbssports.com/podcasts/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Rise to rewards with the BMO Eclipse Rise Visa Card. Terms and conditions apply. It's in the books from London. Anthony Joshua defends a trio of heavyweight world titles with a ninth round TKO against mandatory challenger Kubra Pulev. This is Morning Combat. This is your instant analysis right after the fights. Brian Campbell with you.

One half of your weekly MK duo along with Luke Thomas. Live shows three days a week interviews with the biggest names you know where we're going with that but i want you to like this video i want you to subscribe to what we do here and i want you to kick back and look back on what was a tremendous performance top to bottom from anthony joshua scored four knockdowns scored a defiant finish with a beautiful right hand cross to land the final knockout against Pulev, the 39-year-old from Bulgaria, and effectively end the fight right there. There's going to be a knee-jerk reaction here that I need you to understand but not live in,

right? Like, taste it. Taste the drug, right? But don't inhale it here. It's the fact that Anthony Joshua is now wounded from the two Andy Ruiz fights, too safe, doesn't believe in himself, and would never have a chance to beat another elite heavyweight. That's false at the moment. And obviously this win from Pulev sets up monster potential for 2021, including that Tyson Fury fight. I'm not going to get into that as much in this breakdown,

save that for Monday's morning combat. But just how what AJ may or may not have proved for us right here, let's look at it closely. He was stopped in 2019 by Andy Ruiz, monster upset loss. Comes back and wins it back in December in Saudi Arabia, but was totally safe, two passives, circled from the outside and jabbed the whole way. All in all, this Poulet performance was sort of a middle ground between the two.

And I want to prepare you and let you know that moving forward, that's probably who Anthony Joshua is going to be. So there's nothing to worry about, per se, unless you thought that this man was an impenetrable destroyer the whole time. I got news for you. He wasn't, right? Despite the chiseled muscles, the ability to finish with both hands, the heart he has shown in his big fights, Anthony Joshua is vulnerable. And that's a big part of why covering him and watching him as a

fan has been so fun because he could lose any fight at any time. And I got news for you about your other British hero, right? Lennox Lewis was the same way for most of his career, whether it was a correct perception or not, because we had seen him starched by two different people that he came back and avenged in one. Overall, I saw a lot of the stuff on Twitter. After Joshua got Kubrat Pulev hurt in that third round, he dropped him with an uppercut. I'm sorry, he made Pulev turn his back after hurting him with the right hand, which was a knockdown. And oh, by the way, that could have been the end of the fight right there. Pulev turned his back away from the action, ran to the corner to seek shelter. He was lucky, the referee who had an awful night at the office. I don't remember his name. I'd never seen him before. Hopefully I don't see him again. That could have been a knockout, right? A

stoppage. Instead, it was just a standing eight-counted knockdown, and then AJ came right back with another flurry to get an actual knockdown. Two knockdowns in round three, and I'll give Joshua credit. I think I may have said Fury in that ramble there. You know what I'm saying. You know what I mean. It's AJ. I'll give Joshua credit.

He went for the finish in round three. He had Kubrat Pulev hurt, badly badly hurt and he went for it but when he didn't get it and as we started rounds four five and six there was a a change on twitter change in sort of the public perception of you know maybe aj's waiting too long why is he allowing this wounded animal to linger and kubrat pulev why is he not coming out in rounds four, five, six, and doing exactly what he did in round three? And while you can certainly chastise him or criticize him for that, if you want him to be a destroyer, if you want him to be Mike Tyson, if you don't want him to play with his food,

and you want him to be this prototype, stereotypical, perfect heavyweight, yes, that is what we want of our heroes. That is what ideally he would do. But again, AJ's not that guy. He can be vulnerable. He's always been little quasi vulnerable because it's not that he has a bad or awful chin, but he can be hurt. And these are monster heavyweights in the super heavyweight era that he's fighting. He can get hurt a little bit easy. There's times he can gas a little bit like in the Klitschko fight when he got dropped, where he suddenly had a stamina dump. So would you have loved for Joshua to repeat rounds three and rounds four through seven? Yes, against Kubrat Pulev. But there's

reasons why it didn't happen. And there's reasons in some ways why it shouldn't happen. AJ learned a lot from what happened in that first Andy Ruiz fight. He battered him around the ring himself early in that, what was it, round three, that round of the year contender, knocked Andrew Ruiz down, and then got a little bit too excited, a little bit too in love with his own ability to finish, and he got caught, and he got caught with one of those equilibrium temple shots, and it changed the tenor of that fight, and even though AJ hung around, he was not the same guy, and he learned a lot there, okay?

I get the fear that he may have learned too much negatively and it's changing who he is as a fighter. Well, it is changing who he is as a fighter, but I think given the, look, given the inequities that he has, given the natural weaknesses that he has, he's not perfect. I thought he played this fight against Pulev perfectly in light of what happened last year and in light of the reality of who he is, okay? If you believe at the end of the day Tyson Fury's always going to beat Anthony Joshua under any circumstance, not only do I back you on that belief,

and that's not an awful opinion because Tyson Fury is proving that this is his heavyweight era. He's amazing. But I got a little bit of other news for you. There's pretty much no one else outside of tyson fury that can do that to anthony joshua and anthony joshua showed in this fight against a very stubborn and game pulev that it's not going to be easy to walk through him what we saw in in fury wilder too we're not going to see that necessarily in fury joshua but back to joshua pulev another big reason that AJ wasn't able to get the finish as

quick after that big third round was that Kubrat Pulev put it all on the table. He was very responsible defensively. He covered up on a lot of attempts from AJ throughout the first half of the fight to land the big uppercut, land the combinations and get him out of there. He was also tough as nails to hang in, get his legs back, get his head back, and try to deliver. And then any time I saw in round six, seven, when AJ thought he had an opening, Kuprat Pula was right there to fill it with the right hand. And if he wasn't landing the right hand clean, the threat of it is what kept AJ in not safety mode completely, not prevent defense mode, but the mode that says this.

If I try to go for it and just knock this guy down because i had success in that one round earlier you know i might get caught for it i may have a relapse of what happened last year and um guys i don't know if aj will ever get out of that mode and um and i don't know if that he has to and that's the whole key of of really this take right here is that, you know, he's a little bit damaged, but he's still really damn good in a division that doesn't have absolute technicians, doesn't have people that can put the whole game together.

They texted me right here. So I got to give AJ credit. He rode behind his jab in those middle rounds against Poolev and thought, okay, I'm not going to get him out of here with one shot. I'm going to break him down. And it was that strategic change AJ had in round six, seven, eight, to jab to the body that really brought down who brought Pulev's guard, really brought down the setup for that right hand.

And that was the change in the fight. Now you give Pulev credit. He stood based on his last legs in round eight, and he came out early in that round and landed two very good right hands, very clean. I think it definitely continued the thought in AJ's mind that I can get caught here, but I think it was also the last of what Pulev had

left, and AJ, to his credit, took it very well, and he started to transition to let's continue to pull down Pulev's guard with the jabs to the body, and let's hit him. Let's open him up and get him out of here. The ninth round was beautiful. AJ, three consecutive uppercuts with the right hand.

All landed clean and all hurt him. And that led to Pulev taking the kodo knee, more or less, to wait it out, clear his head, get back up. And when he did, it was that beautiful one to the jab and then that right cross. And you can see our guy 6'6", right, with a ridiculously long leech in Joshua. He set that up from so far away. It was such a beautiful knockout blow. Yes, Pulev got to his feet, but he wasn't okay.

Good stoppage, great finish. I mean, we cannot forget this when talking about Joshua's flaws is, you know, while there's the best one-punch guy in this division and game in general, but I don't think there's a better finisher at heavyweight, all things considered. Like, Luis Ortiz got power and and craft but there's nobody who can finish and can smell the blood like aj and get people out of there now again you may your whole take on this fight maybe he can smell the blood right he can he can listen to jimmy but he can't hear it can he though deliver well he's not going to take those chances especially against against the guy as stubborn and responsible as Pulev.

And again, there aren't a whole hell of a lot of guys as stubborn and responsible as Pulev. He didn't have real big avenues to win in this fight, but he did very well to keep himself alive in it and avoid going down in it for good in round three when the waters got choppy. So in closing, look, this is who AJ is going forward. I don't care if he fights Luis Ortiz tomorrow or Sefer Safuri

or whoever you got, you know, your Uber driver. He's going to be a little bit cautious, but he's also 6'6", and jacked, and strong, and quick, and has a much better IQ when it comes to boxing that I think people give him credit for. Go rewatch that somewhat boring Joseph Parker unification bout in which he boxed beautifully. He can do a lot of things. I don't think he's damaged goods in a negative sense anymore where he still can't fulfill

his long-term goals and fulfill his legacy. I just think we need to come to terms at who he is. And this may be a thing where his confidence starts to grow. A couple more wins over time, right? Or it may be a thing where his confidence starts to grow, a couple more wins over time, right? Or it may be a thing where he is this sort of cautious forever. But if he can keep people at distance, as he did to Pulev with his jab, and be that quick and be that game and savvy, he may just outbox people.

And there may be fights where you go, like we did the second half of Vladimir Klitschko's career, where we go, oh, that's boring, man. He just, you know, he plays it safe. He just keeps them out there on the end of the jab. That also might keep AJ around a lot. but best believe as we saw in this one, as we saw in round nine, if he finds the opening, he'll get you out of there. AJ is a fun fighter. He's a special fighter. He's also a bit damaged and a bit of a, you know, imperfect fighter.

In a lot of ways, that's how we love him. I want to see AJ Fury more than you do, believe me. And I hope we do next year. A lot more to come on Monday's morning combat to talk about that what the fight would look like what steps have to be made to make it all that and then some tall pale and handsome it is your boy BC signing off for now on the instant analysis of morning combat like and subscribe it's AJ's night in London sweet Caroline indeed ninth round TKO he's still got three or four belts he still is your power player in the heavyweight division. And if he was here, he'd tell you two words, right? We out.