Josh Kelly is at a stage in his career where he wants the biggest fights and to compete against the best fighters.
He is, of course, open to facing the champions, but also the leading names in and around 154lbs.
The Rio Olympian is in one of boxing’s most stacked weight classes, but the 16-1-1 (8 KOs) 31 year old believes it is his time.
On Friday night, in Newcastle, England he fights Flavius Biea, the 24-1 (12KOs) Romanian Kelly admits he had not heard of before.
Kelly, regardless, has started to call loudly for the big fights.
“Well, [Conor] Benn or [Chris] Eubank or someone like that would be cool,” he told BoxingScene. “So, just big fights – just ones that will get people talking, ones that will get people excited, ones where you get excited.”
Asked who would give him the harder fight of the two, the fast-handed Englishman said: “I’d probably say Benn. I think Eubank’s come to the end of his performances; I don’t think he’s got much left; especially at that weight, draining himself. I think at the moment Benn probably has got a lot more life in him.”
Kelly confirmed he had heard that there had been talks to match him with Denzel Bentley up at middleweight because of their high respective ratings with the WBO at 154 and 160
“I heard about it, but nothing really got made,” he said. “Obviously, I’ll go to 160. I’ve been there last fight – obviously it wasn’t a legit 160 [against junior middle Ishmael Davis] – but I can go to 160 and perform. The guys are going to be bigger; stronger, but I can definitely go there and get some surprising wins.”
But it is at 154lbs where Kelly believes he will shine brightest.
Sebastian Fundora has recently given up one of his two belts to enter a rematch with Tim Tszyu.
Of the gangling “Towering Inferno”, Kelly says he is: “Tall; awkward; readable; I feel like he’s readable; he’s a freak as well.”
Of Tszyu, who is coming off two defeats in his past three, Kelly assessed: “Strong; very good at the basics; too brave sometimes; but he’s beatable; but he’s good; solid.”
Tszyu had been linked to Keith Thurman, of whom Kelly said: “I think he’s passed it; Keith Thurman was athletic in the past, but he’s passed it now.”
IBF champion Bakhram Murtazaliev, of Russia, is preparing to face his leading contender Erickson Lubin, but discussing the champion Kelly simply said: “Perfect fight for me.”
It is Vergil Ortiz Jnr – “a killer” – for whom Kelly has the most admiration.
“The way he was able to put hands on [Israil] Madrimov was good, he’s just got them fast, spiteful hands and he’s got a hype. If you come to fight him, he can punch, so you’re going to have to be on your game to fight him, and on my game, he’d have to be trying to find me in six or seven corners of that ring. He’d have to try his best to try and catch me, and I’d be countering him as much as I can.”
It is the chance to test himself against the best in the world that appeals to Kelly. When he turned over in 2016 he was deemed by many of his contemporaries as a sure-fire future world champion.
“As a kid, that’s what you dream about doing,” he said. “You dream about fighting these big fights, being involved in the big fights, and testing yourself as an athlete – you always want to test yourself against the best, you know what I mean? End of the day, it’s about making money, but at the same time, internally, you want to say, ‘Yeah, I tested myself against the best, I won, I tested myself against the best, and I just come up short’. It could be one of them, you know what I mean? And it’s like, ‘Yeah, I fought them, but I went there and did it,’ and I believe on my night, when I’m in that ring and I’m on form, I’m a fucking hard person to beat. I’m not satisfied yet.
“There’s a lot more to achieve, and I feel like I’m still young in the sport. I haven’t took a lot of miles on the clock. I haven’t took a lot of hard fights; I’m still athletic; I’m still firing on all cylinders. I actually think I’m coming into my prime now – 30; 31; 32 – and I think these few years will be the best version of myself, but them years don’t last for long, so you need to get the big fights in, so that’s why I’m trying to capitalise on it now.”
There will be a passionate crowd at the Newcastle Arena cheering him on, on the terrestrial television platform of Channel 5. And it is a sense of occasion he did not have against Davis. While they fought at Wembley Stadium – on the undercard of Daniel Dubois-Anthony Joshua – they did so early on in the evening and in front of rows of empty seats.
For Kelly, the sparseness of the situation was a shock.
“You feel like you’re in the gym… I felt like, not in the gym, but I felt like there’s no atmosphere here,” he said. “I feel like I’m just talking to [trainer] Adam [Booth], and it’s like, it’s weird. It was like a spar. I felt like that. I really love the crowd. I really love the buzz and I come alive, and you hear [the crowd] and it’s like, ‘Right, all right now, let me switch on. Now it’s time to get my head in [the game], and I’m going now’, and I sort of just, put that cocky mindset on, and I just go into this flow and I’m putting a performance on for the crowd, and just feeding off it and feeding off the energy. There’s nothing there to really grab – it’s hard, do you know what I mean?”
Davis had been a late replacement for the ill Liam Smith, in a fight that would have done more for Kelly’s rankings, although he is fourth with both the IBF and the WBO. He is 11th with the WBC.
Kelly outboxed Davis throughout, but he had to grit his teeth through some uncomfortable moments in the final round, and despite his performance up to that point, he was only awarded a majority decision.
“The decision and the last round sort of like masked the full performance, and the performance wasn’t my best,” he said. “But he’s got the excuse that he took the fight at short notice – even though you thought you were ready – he was ready to box in a couple of weeks’ time anyways, so you can’t use that excuse, so that’s one thing there, and then obviously I get moved down the card [after Smith withdrew] – it’s not as lively and as entertaining as I want it to be, and I took a guy on who’s unbeaten; strong; game; wants to come, and he’s a difficult fighter to open up – southpaw-orthodox – I took that all on a week’s notice as well.
“So I’m fighting a totally different style. I thought to myself, ‘Listen, just box him, get the win, keep it moving’, and I did that, until obviously the cut happened [in the final round], and then everything happened off the back of that, and it’s just one of them things. I couldn’t see in the last round, and I keep telling people I wasn’t hurt whatsoever, I just couldn’t see a thing. Now when I was grabbing, and I was trying to get my legs in a good position to be able to look at the clock and stuff, and I remember looking at the clock once and smiling, and thinking, ‘This is crazy, this last round’. When they read the scorecards, I was like, ‘That’s crazy’. I think I gave him max three rounds, max – max four rounds – but other than that, I felt as though I was in first gear. It was okay but I could have let my hands go a lot more; could have been in front of him a lot more, but I decided just to box safe, and I was in first gear, and I should have really upped it, but it is what it is.”
The 35-year-old Biea is not an opponent he was craving, but Kelly knows he cannot afford to slip up if he is to land the fights he covets most.