By Cliff Rold

Already the grumblings have begun. Take a quick spin through social media or message forums and the questions are already forming.

When will he make the step up?

When will he fight real guys?

2012 Olympic Super Heavyweight Gold Medalist Anthony Joshua (13-0, 13 KO) of the United Kingdom can take those questions as a compliment. They typically get asked when people think they might be seeing something special. Joshua might be just that. Like kids dying to open a gift at Christmas, finding out if a ‘maybe special’ fighter is the real deal can be a study in fan impatience.

A latecomer to the sport at age 18, the now 25-year old Joshua has emerged as a leading candidate for the spot as heir apparent to Heavyweight king Wladimir Klitschko. A London date with Scotland’s Gary Cornish (21-0, 12 KO) this Saturday might quiet some of the questions.

It’s unlikely.

Cornish is big on size (6’7, usually in the 240’s) but light on resume. The 28-year old is heavy underdog but also represents a healthy step in Joshua’s development. Joshua has feasted to date on a few names past their best and a standard assortment of no-hopers. Now, it appears we are to the phase where he begins to test himself against some fellow professional prospects.

After an ear of Cornish or two, the next step would be contenders on the fringe of the top ten. That’s not a guess based on any inside information. It’s a prediction based on the established curve for many of the best Heavyweights over the years. It says here that Joshua’s development has been well handled to now.

We’re getting to the part that counts.

Joshua is moving along right on time. This isn’t a Flyweight-ish ingénue like Naoya Inoue or Kazuto Ioka where an early splash helps make the marketing. This is a potential Heavyweight (big C) Champion that could make a lot of people a lot of money for years. He’s even got a potential rival rising in New Zealand’s Joseph Parker (15-0, 13 KO), another fighter being moved along a careful curve.

Fostering Heavyweights is just a different business.  

Just shy of two years into his professional career, Joshua’s learning curve is a hair behind a Mike Tyson or Joe Louis, right on par with fighters like Riddick Bowe, Lennox Lewis, and Muhammad Ali, and might be a bit ahead of the Klitschko brothers.

Does that mean Joshua will ever be mentioned with those fighters?

At 13-0, it’s too early to say. Those are the stakes though. When you have the look of the next big thing at Heavyweight, history is the measuring stick. Let’s take a closer look at where some of those men were at both their fourteenth professional start and the end of their second year as a pro.

Louis and Tyson had meteoric rises in the division. Louis was 24-1 at the end of his first two years in the sport and had his fourteenth fight just more than eight months after his debut. Fight fourteen came against journeyman Hans Birkie. Birkie’s record wasn’t as shiny as Cornish’s but he faced a who’s who of the time and typically lasted the route. Before his career was three years old, Louis moved to 31-1 and won the Heavyweight crown from James Braddock.

Tyson exploded out of the blocks much the same, though with much less staying power than Louis. He had his fourteenth fight a little more than nine months after debut against a Sammy Schaff who had lost his last two. His first belt came twenty months into his career when a Tyson won his 28th fight against Trevor Berbick. Tyson consolidated all of the major titles in August 1987, two years and five months into his career, and added history’s crown with a first round destruction Michael Spinks in June 1988.

For the impatient, Louis and Tyson didn’t leave much time to wonder how long it would be before they stepped up their competition. However, even in fast-forward, their career curves followed a fairly traditional path.

Louis mowed through the no hopers, then the former champions and regular contenders like Primo Carnera, King Levinsky, Paulino Uzcudun, and Max Baer. Louis had a famous hiccup with Max Schmeling but the volume of his conquests (and a little bit of global politics) kept him on his rocket ride to the title. Tyson went through the cans, really started to test the tougher waters in a showdown with James Tillis, and was consistently fighting top ten Heavyweights from Berbick forward.

If Joshua is a little behind what a Louis or Tyson was getting done at the two-year mark, he’s not alone. Those are outliers. Ali, Bowe and Lewis all followed development paths that are similar to where Joshua is today. Ali, then Cassius Clay, was 15-0 at the end of his first two years and in his fourteenth fight faced undefeated Billy Daniels. Like Cornish, Daniels had a shiny but suspect record. Ali stopped him in seven and Daniels would lose 21 times and win only seven more before he was done. Ali would win the title at roughly three and a half years in with his famous upset of Sonny Liston.

Joshua could match that. Assuming Klitschko continues his long reign, Joshua would have to be ready for the Ukrainian kingpin by February 2017. Is that a far-fetched scenario?

Bowe turned pro in March 1989 and had his fourteenth fight less than a year later against a much lesser foe than Cornish will be; a 4-5-1 no-hoper named Mike Robinson. By the end of his second year, he was adding veteran names like Pinklon Thomas and Tyrell Biggs to his resume. That’s probably a bit better than Joshua’s most recent knockout of former title challenger Kevin Johnson. He was ahead of Joshua at two years in that sense but Bowe maintained at that level for a while. His title shot came in a November 1992 with Evander Holyfield, three years and eight months after debut.

For Joshua, that would mean being ready for Klitschko by about April of 2017. Is that a far-fetched scenario?

Lewis, who like Joshua was an Olympic Super Heavyweight Gold Medalist, turned pro in June 1989. He got to fourteen wins in sixteen months, knocking off Jean-Marie Chanet. If no one remembers that name, well, why would they? At the two-year mark, Lewis had added only one more win. It was more impressive than Cornish, against an undefeated Gary Mason who was seen as on the fringes of the top ten when they fought. If Joshua wants to mimic Lewis, he’s not far off the course. Lewis stopped Razor Ruddock in two rounds in October 1992 to earn what should have been a crack at the Bowe-Holyfield winner.

It didn’t come to pass. Lewis wouldn’t ultimately win history’s crown until a 1998 knockout of Shannon Briggs and earned universal recognition as king with a win over Evander Holyfield in 1999. Could he have beaten Bowe in 1993? We’ll never know for sure, just like we won’t know for sure whether Joshua can beat Klitschko until he gets there and tries. Lewis was in position to challenge Bowe at what would have been right around the three and a half year mark of his career.

See above for dates and a question about scenarios.

Even if Joshua falls off the approximate parallels in pace between Ali, Bowe, and Lewis, he can look at some other big time Heavyweights and see he has time on his side. Both Klitschko brothers took longer paths to their arrival at the top of the division. While both won WBO titles along the way, it was at a time when the WBO Heavyweight title still bore a certain lack of credibility. Names like Herbie Hide, Francesco Damiani, and Henry Akinwande never really screamed, “The Champ is here!” while Tyson, Holyfield, Bowe, and Lewis were on the scene.

At fourteen fights, Vitali Klitschko was fighting Marcus Rhode and Wladimir was fighting “Wimpy” Halstead. They were both more active than Joshua but neither was moved as quickly towards Lewis as Bowe, Lewis, or Ali were moved towards the top. At the two-year mark, they were (like Joshua) still making development steps.

Neither got towards the very top of the division until well into their careers. Wladimir’s problem was he kept getting stopped before he could find his groove. He’s been a steady exercise in cleaning out the division during his current reign, unbeaten since 2004.

Vitali, turned pro in November 1996 and deemed unattractive to US television for years after an injury corner stoppage against Chris Byrd in 2000, faced years of ordinary opposition until securing a mandatory with Lewis in June 2003. He didn’t win but the effort he gave made his then almost seven-year career. He would sit as the assumed king after Lewis’s retirement in many circles. Injuries shelved his chance to truly prove it but he came back and had a dominant late career run as no less than second best to baby brother after a near-four year absence.

In other words, even if Joshua isn’t ready to challenge for the title by the first half of 2017, things can still work out just fine.

If you’re reading this and Cornish doesn’t do it for you, if you think Joshua is ready for someone like beltholder Deontay Wilder now and let’s just get there, it’s perfectly okay. Eventually, the reward will arrive and we’ll see if Joshua is as good as he looks.

Heading into this weekend’s fight with Cornish, it’s hard to argue that everything isn’t going according to schedule. 

Cliff Rold is the Managing Editor of BoxingScene, a founding member of the Transnational Boxing Rankings Board, and a member of the Boxing Writers Association of America.  He can be reached at roldboxing@hotmail.com