Last month, Wladimir Klitschko - at age 41 - had what many felt was the finest performance of his pro career and it was a contest where the former world champion lost.
Before a crowd of over 90,000 fans at Wembley on London, Klitschko recovered from a bad knockdown in the fifth round to return the favor in the sixth by dropping Joshua and nearly putting him away.
Joshua eventually caught a second wind and scored two knockdowns in the eleventh to stop Klitschko. With the victory Joshua unified the WBA, IBF, IBO heavyweight titles.
There is an immediate rematch clause in the contract. At the moment there is no word on whether or not Klitschko will go in that direction.
According to Klitschko's manager, Bernd Boente, the boxer will make his decision by early June.
“As you can imagine, he was absolutely disappointed after the fight in the locker room while we were all sitting together,” Boente told Boxing News.
“Now he feels better, he’s on vacation in Florida with his wife and daughter, relaxing a little bit and he’ll make his decision very quickly when he gets back, the latest at the beginning of June, or maybe in between, what his next step will be. That next step could be the rematch or that he retires, but that’s up to him.”
Klitschko was coming off a very disappointing loss to Tyson Fury in November 2015 and more than a handful of experts believed he was finished as a top level fighter. He gained more respect from pundits in the loss to Joshua than from any other bout in his career.
Boente says Klitschko is now even more confident in his ability to beat Joshua.
“He’s not that disappointed anymore, he knows that he made some mistakes but he also knows that he could beat Anthony,” Boente said.
“He showed that. Two, three more punches in round six or even round seven and he would’ve been the winner. He knows that and he will discuss it with his coach and then I think the decision for him has to be; will I again go through three months of hard training to show up in the same condition as I did at Wembley, or will I not do it? That is up to him and we’ll leave it to him and he’ll let us know.”