By Luke Furman
Heavyweights Anthony Joshua and Wladimir Klitschko are getting the best possible sparring partners for their highly anticipated fight.
Joshua and Klitschko will collide on April 29th for the IBF, WBA, IBO world titles. The Sky Sports Box Office fight will take place before a record crowd of 90,000 fans at Wembley.
The contest is the biggest, by far, in the career of Joshua (18-0, 18 KOs) - who is viewed as the next king of the heavyweight division.
Joshua is sparring with the Polish Giant, Mariusz Wach, who recently defeated Erkan Teper.
Wach challenged Klitschko for his world titles in 2012 and became one of the few boxers to last the full twelve round distance. He took a beating in the later rounds of the fight, but never went down. Following that contest he tested positive for steroids and was given a minor suspension by the commission in Germany.
Wach also fought Alexander Povetkin in the fall of 2015, and was stopped in the twelfth round - although the fight could have easily been allowed to finish as he took nowhere near the amount of punishment as he did in the Klitschko contest.
For his part, Klitschko is using once-beaten Gerald Washington, who has very similar physical features to Joshua.
Washington challenged WBC champion Deontay Wilder back in February. He gave Wilder a lot of trouble in the early rounds and some felt that he might have swept the first four rounds of the contest, before Wilder finally caught him and stopped him in the fifth.
Klitschko is no stranger to securing top sparring partners - and he's used both Joshua and Wilder in the past to prepare for his title defenses.
The former heavyweight champion, 41 years old, has been inactive since November 2015, when he suffered an upset decision loss at the hands of Tyson Fury.
Luke Furman covers boxing for bokser.org.