Anthony Joshua was impressive yet again Saturday night in London as he electrified the capacity crowd inside the O2 Arena by dominating unbeaten American slugger Dominic Breazeale. The defending heavyweight titlist dropped his foe twice before stopping him in the seventh.
Joshua, who captured Olympic gold in ’12, battered his challenger throughout, busting up his head and body and completely closing his right eye. Finally, a flurry of bombs to the noggin dropped Breazeale early in the seventh and when he struggled to his feet, the end was only moments away. A sizzling right-left to the head finished “Trouble” for good, the final knockdown finally ending the beating at 61 seconds into the frame.
Joshua (17-0, 17 KOs) continues to raise eyebrows and nab attention from all over the boxing world and though he was a heavy favorite going into his Showtime-televised title defense, he dismantled a tough, previously-unbeaten contender with serious punching power.
In the co-featured bout, George Groves (24-3, 18 KOs) controlled the pace and wound up winning a somewhat surprising lopsided unanimous decision over Martin Murray (33-4-1, 16 KOs). While there were no knockdowns in the duel, Groves plastered his foe with dozens of clean shots and wound up winning via tallies of 118-110 on all three ringside cards.
Finally, popular fighter Chris Eubank abused Tom Doran as he knocked him down four times en route to a one-sided stoppage. Eubank (24-1, 18 KOs) dropped his foe once in the third and three more times in the fourth before the mugging was finally halted at the 2:35 mark. Doran fell to 17-1 with 7 KOs. Eubank, meanwhile, called out Gennady Golovkin after the fight.