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Dmitriy Salita, promoter for heavyweight contender Otto Wallin, is beating the drum for his boxer to face former two-time world champion Anthony Joshua.
Wallin gave current WBC world champion Tyson Fury a lot of trouble in their 2019 encounter, which saw Fury sustain two severe cuts above his eye.
Last weekend in Saudi Arabia, Joshua lost a twelve round decision in his rematch with WBO, IBF, IBO, WBA world champion Oleksandr Usyk.
Joshua is looking make a quick return to the ring, with dates in December being explored.
Salita was impressed by Joshua’s performance.
“Based on this performance it looks like Anthony Joshua has got a lot of big fights left. The one that makes the most sense as the next one is Otto Wallin. Especially if Tyson fights Usyk in December. Joshua did a great job, he is still improving as a fighter. Looks like Robert Garcia and the rest of the team helped breathe new life into him,” Salita told Lord Ping.
“Otto gave Tyson Fury the hardest fight of his career. Landed more punches than Wladimir Klitschko and the first Wilder fight put together. Otto has gotten better and has had four wins since that match. If Tyson is fighting Usyk in December and Joshua wants to show that he belongs in that elite conversation, there is no better measuring stick for both objectively than Otto Wallin. Otto wants another shot at Tyson and to get to Tyson seems to be that both need each other.”
Salita believes the mental pressure of last week’s rematch was too much for Joshua to handle – which led to a post-fight rant from Joshua on the arena mic.
“I was ok with Joshua’s post fight speech, obviously you can see the kind of mental pressure a high level fighter has to go through to compete in front of tens of millions of fans. Sometimes looking at TV we may not realize that he is a real person with feelings, emotions and ups and downs like everyone else. With all of that and the weight of the loss less than a year ago he did a fantastic job. As a boxing fan I have no problem with Joshua saying what he said. I actually think he is a classy guy. It’s very, very difficult. So much respect to Joshua for coming off a loss and reinventing himself in a relatively short period of time,” Salita said.