Jermaine Franklin says he feels it’s disrespectful towards him that people have been saying that Anthony Joshua should retire if he loses to him this Saturday night in their fight at the O2 Arena in London.
Franklin (21-1, 14 KOs) interprets the fans saying Joshua (24-3, 22 KOs) should retire after losing to him as a signal that they don’t view him as a good fighter. If they see think he had ability, they wouldn’t be saying that Joshua should retire.
Franklin has reportedly lost 24 pounds, and he looks almost too small, weighing in the mid-230s. If the weight loss has taken away what little power Franklin has, it could be difficult for him to keep the much larger Joshua off him.
Joshua looked like he’s gained with in training camp with new coach Derrick James, which is surprising because he says he hasn’t been lifting a lot of weights.
“I find that disrespectful because people haven’t even seen me, so I find that disrespectful that people think that low of me that they think I’m not a great fighter. They think I’m not a good fighter,” said Jermaine Franklin to Secondsout.
“If you’re saying that if I beat Joshua, his career is over with. How can you say that? I just dominated somebody that had a reign in the sport for 10 years. So how can you take anything from me as a man?
“I find it kind of disrespectful, but that’s the kind of sport we’re in. We don’t get love like basketball, football, and all the other sports. Boxing is a sport where you’re either on top or your not.
“I respect him as a man. I respect all fighters. When people talk s**t, we talk it back.
“I studied some from the losses [to Oleksandr Usyk], but I study everything. We like to analyze the small stuff. We want to analyze the smallest things, even in the fights that he’s winning. He’s making mistakes.
“Everyone has mistakes and flaws. I call them habits. You have mistakes that are hard to break that you constantly do. So we look out for the small stuff like that we can capitalize off of.
“Usyk is a great fighter. He kept turning him and using angles because he didn’t want him to get set. There’s other things that I seen that we can capitalize off of,” said Franklin.
