On a hazy spring afternoon in a farmyard gym outside Brentwood in Essex, Anthony Joshua’s face lights up as he anticipates the most important contest of his brief but highly impressive boxing career so far. He faces the swaggering American Kevin “Kingpin” Johnson at the O2 Arena in London on Saturday and his opponent has talked up a storm.
“We squared off at the first press conference and it’s great that Johnson has no fear of me and I have no fear of him,” Joshua says with a wide grin. “He’s been in with Vitali Klitschko and he’s thinking: ‘If Vitali can’t drop me, who the hell is this kid?’”
The 25-year-old laughs softly at the apparent logic of Johnson. “Look, he’s an American. They’re a different breed. They’re arrogant. Their egos are bigger than themselves but that’s what makes it interesting.”
Amir Khan can rule welterweight division for years, says Virgil Hunter
Read more
Joshua, with his imposing physique and cheerful character layered by a bright intelligence and past adversity, is an Olympic champion with a 12-0 professional record. None of his opponents have lasted more than three rounds but Joshua thinks carefully and talks fluidly whether assessing Johnson’s mentality or revealing that, while still a Watford teenager, he was on remand and preparing for a 10-year prison term. That candid admission indicates a serious resolve to make up for his youthful mistakes and, one day, become the undisputed world heavyweight champion.
But, first, he is genuinely engaged when asked if he thinks Johnson really believes he can win their fight. Joshua leans back in his chair and savours the question. “Hmmm … let me put myself in Johnson’s shoes. If I do that then the answer is ‘yes’. He will be looking at me as a green novice who has had only 12 fights. He’s going to throw some sneaky lefts which he thinks might shock me. I think he really does believe he has a chance.”
Johnson is canny and he has not been stopped in 36 fights. He is expected to last longer than any of Joshua’s previous opponents – even if that means he adopts a strategy of survival to avoid being hit cleanly. In his quieter reflections Johnson will have seen how Joshua’s pulverising power appears more evident with each new victory. “The last guy was supposed to last,” the 6ft 6in Joshua says of Raphael Zumbano Love, the experienced Brazilian heavyweight, whom he knocked out inside two rounds in Birmingham this month. “A lot of guys I’ve fought as a pro have been shorter than me and they’ve been trying to counter me. Zumbano was about the same height so I could counter him. I slipped more punches and that’s how I got Zumbano. I threw a lazy jab just as he did and I knew I was coming over the top. That’s why I got that spectacular KO. I’m not punching down. I’m punching straight over the top of his jab.
“But I’m not hitting anywhere near as hard as I can because I want the rounds. People say of every opponent: ‘When are you going to knock him out?’ But I’m not like Mike Tyson who came flying out of his corner. I’m much more composed. A guy is supposed to be durable but then I start finding my range and, well, it comes together. Boom.”
James DeGale wins IBF title with unanimous decision over Andre Dirrell
Read more
Joshua spreads his hands and smiles helplessly at his power. Over the course of the afternoon we talk a lot about great old heavyweights, from Joe Louis to Tyson, and Joshua is acutely aware how even once seemingly impregnable champions were not only defeated but ended up in chaos, debt and drug addiction. He pinpoints the need to keep the myth of invincibility in check and, even more pressingly, to avoid a vast retinue of admirers and hangers-on.
He may have looked like a sculpted wrecking machine in his first dozen fights but Joshua admits he has yet to be examined. The heavyweight thinks long and hard when asked if he can identify even a small moment of difficulty for him as a pro. The pause lasts 10 seconds before Joshua shakes his head. “In the gym, during sparring, there have been some. But in the arenas, during fights, not one hard moment springs to mind. The only thing I could say is that I boxed Michael Sprott with a fractured back [Joshua’s injury was diagnosed after his first-round win]. But it’s still early days.”
Joshua knows that, eventually, there will be hard nights ahead. And so it feels important to ask him about his last defeat at the 2011 amateur world championships. “Magomedrasul Majidov was an unbelievable fighter,” he says of the renowned amateur from Azerbaijan. “But I had only been boxing for two and a half years then because my first amateur fight was in November 2008. So he was much more experienced.
“Majidov wasn’t big or tough-looking. I thought I would have him easy. But in the first round I was like a novice, missing shots, spinning off. I still thought it was going to be easy. But he came steaming out in the second and caught me with a beautiful shot. Boom. I was OK but I thought: ‘You want to take it there? Suits me.’ I lost my composure and went toe-to-toe with him. That cost me the fight. He won 21-20. I shed a tear afterwards.”
Muhammad Ali’s phantom punch has us scratching our heads 50 years on
Richard Williams
Richard Williams Read more
As we discuss his two other defeats as an amateur, Joshua selects his second loss at the European Championships, also in 2011, as a way to understand his troubled background. “That was when I had my one court case,” he says, remembering how he had been caught in possession of cannabis and charged wrongly with an intent to supply. “They had banned me from all boxing internationally and domestically for my club. I thought I’m done with boxing. So I went back to Watford and started hanging around with my mates. But that’s when GB Boxing called me up and asked if I want to go to the Europeans. They said: ‘We’re still looking into your case …’ So I had a week’s training and then lost in the quarter-finals.
“It was a turning point. Before the world championships I said: ‘Man, I have to change. I have an opportunity with boxing that I believe in. I am going to focus all my energies in boxing.’ I was 21 and I’d had my share of problems. Another court case actually got me into boxing. I was facing a long sentence … and when I beat that I decided to start boxing.”
Was this earlier case also cannabis-related? “No,” Joshua says. “It was fighting and other crazy stuff. I was actually on remand, when you’re in jail waiting for your sentence. There are idiots inside and this is when you realise what you are dealing with in prison. I was on remand in Reading for two weeks. Once you’re there it’s 50-50 because you’ve been found guilty, so I was preparing myself for the worst. It could have been 10 years.
I would’ve been there until I was 28 because I was 18 at the time. So I would have still been there right now …”
Joshua shakes his head bleakly at his narrow escape but then brightens. “My guardian angel decided I didn’t need to be punished with a jail sentence. But I was on tag for over a year and that helped. I became so disciplined when I was on tag. I would be at home by eight o’clock and because I had boxing, I lived the disciplined life. I started reading because I learnt that so many champions educated themselves. Joe Louis, Mike Tyson, Bernard Hopkins. Before it was ‘act now, think later’ – but the discipline and reading changed me.
“Before, I was just with guys my age or younger and we’d drive past fancy houses and say: ‘Oh, when I make my money I’m going to buy that house.’ But it was a far-fetched dream. People who do crime do it for reward. But you end up in jail – that’s no reward. Through crime your ambitions are low. It’s strange but now I am being invited into these fancy houses. And I enter them polite and humble. It’s amazing how boxing turned me around.”
We’re at a farmyard house, owned by a friend of Eddie Hearn, Joshua’s promoter, where there is a helicopter in the back garden. And yet I like the fact Joshua has not swapped his council house in Golders Green in north-west London for a swanky penthouse.
“I’m happy where I am,” he says. “I bought the council house and I’ve got another small flat as an investment. It’s humbling and it shows I’m only 12 fights in and I’m not in the big-money fights yet. And it’s so expensive in London. So I am doing more investments rather than buying luxury things. You can make a lot of money in boxing – but you have not come from an educated background. Guys have come from jail or poverty-ridden backgrounds and suddenly they’re in million-dollar fights. That’s why I’m staying sensible and making sure it’s structured. It’s also why I went into camp with Wladimir Klitschko. I chatted to him as much as possible
. I wanted to see how a champion operates and I achieved that. I also got to showcase some of my skills.”
When I last spoke to Klitschko he was effusive in his praise for Joshua – both for his prowess between the ropes and his maturity outside the ring. Klitschko told me he had no doubt Joshua would follow him as the dominant force in the heavyweight division for years.
“It’s very interesting,” Joshua says. “A lot of UK heavyweights never give you a compliment. But Wlad, who has an Olympic medal and is the second-longest-running world champ after Joe Louis, can give me these unbelievable props. Someone like Tyson Fury says he would knock out Wlad but it’s not based on logic. He just says: ‘Wlad’s shit.’ I want to say ‘shut up’ to those kind of guys. They’ve done nothing compared to Klitschko.”
The Ukrainian is 39 and it is surely unlikely he will still be fighting in another 18 months when Joshua may be ready to challenge him. “No man!” Joshua exclaims. “It’s very likely. You know boxing. A great world champion and the new prospect would be a huge fight. My gut says it will definitely happen. What makes a champion great is how he dethrones the guy before him.
Look at Mike Tyson against Trevor Berbick and how he crushed him. You have to rip the title away from him. In order to become a great you have to beat the current champion in totally dominant fashion. That’s why I would like to fight Klitschko.”
A supposedly durable big-mouth in “Kingpin” Johnson, however, needs to be beaten next. “No one has ever stopped him so I am in a win-win situation – unless I lose,” Joshua quips. “He’s a credible opponent for my 13th fight. If I don’t stop him I will have gone 10 rounds for the first time. If I knock him out? Well it’s just another guy who, once I hit him, stays hit. How can I lose?
