ANTHONY JOSHUA is a case-study in capitalist man. His entire identity has been and remains rooted in the need for validation on a superficial plane. Every loss in the ring is a spur to re-evaluation and reflection on the basis that winning is everything in life.
It is not.
When he appeared at the post-fight presser after his drubbing at the powerful hands of fellow Brit Daniel Dubois last Saturday night at Wembley, he did so armed with his now usual stock of platitudes. These he proceeded to voice as if in a pre-prepared script. It was all “I’m a warrior” this and “We came up short” that. Perhaps the most trite of all was the line, “We pick ourselves back up and we go again.”
The 35-year-old two-time former world heavyweight champion has long be heralded by his those around him as the man who single-handedly turned boxing into the mass spectator and stadium-fight sport it has become in Britain.
Indeed, from the moment he stepped off the podium at the 2012 London Olympics with the gold medal around his neck, Joshua has sold himself and been sold as a corporate brand as much as he has an elite athlete. This is no surprise — not when you consider a backstory of a bad boy from the mean streets of Watford who succeeded in turning his life around through a sport that has arguably done more in this regard than any other.
This said, his professional career since 2012 has traced the psychological trials and tribulations of a man suffering the ravages of impostor syndrome — a fighter who despite stentorian statements to the contrary, has never really felt sure that he’s as good a fighter as portrayed and truly belongs at the top.
Looking back, his stunning performance and victory over an ageing Wladimir Klitschko at Wembley back in 2017, which involved Joshua picking himself off the canvas to finally stop the impressive Ukrainian in the eleventh, came at significant cost. It rattled him psychologically to know that he could be hurt and dropped in a fight, and ever since his ring demeanour has been that of a man who has been caught between two styles — extreme caution and reckless aggression.
Seminal in his post-Klitschko career was his June 2019 clash with Andy Ruiz at New York’s iconic Madison Square Garden.
Ushered in as a late replacement, Ruiz climbed through the ropes looking like he’d done so in error. If his belly had been any bigger it would have warranted its own postcode. Yes, but boxing is a sport of skill and will not biceps and triceps, which everyone watching had confirmed when Ruiz emerged victorious. This he did after himself climbing off the canvas to do so midway through and stopping Joshua in a stunning upset.
Joshua, to his immense credit, is a fighter who has never made excuses in defeat. Instead he has made a virtue of taking it on the chin (pun intended) and moving forward. Nonetheless, it was now the sense that here was young man battling with his own success and the pressure to continue succeeding became apparent.
Two back-to-back defeats to Oleksandr Usyk and Joshua was floundering, struggling to deal with the loss of a public identity established for him rather than by him. And all in the name of pay-per-view revenue, commercial opportunity and brand.
The hardest opponent any fighter will face in their career is the one who looks back at him or her in the mirror. This is true on any given day during the long weeks of a given and gruelling training camp. However, this is one opponent that grows in stature and menace during fight week, and unless confronted and vanquished, it morphs into a looming spectre.
The result is that a fighter can often lose a fight before even entering the ring, which rather than a place of athletic contest takes on the character of a chopping block or gallows.
Think Frank Bruno on his ring entrance to face Mike Tyson in their rematch back in 1996. By this point a national treasure, it was a ghost rather than a man who made the walk from the dressing room to the ring that night. It was the same look of doom that was etched on the face of Anthony Joshua when he made his own walk to the ring to face Daniel Dubois last Saturday.
Speaking of Mike Tyson, it was he who once famously said, “Everybody has a plan until they get punched in the mouth.” In words that could also be a metaphor for life, they took on the character of a revealed truth just 20 seconds into the first round of Joshua clash with his younger British rival and current IBF title holder.
The long overhand right Dubois unleashed to send Joshua down for the first of four occasions at Wembley came, it seemed, from the soles of his feet. Not that the target was difficult to find. Joshua had come out of an early exchange and made the cardinal and novice error of moving back in a straight line from Dubois with his hands down.
Thereafter the stage was set for the shellacking that was suffered by British boxing’s talisman in front of 98,000 spectators. It was a brutal pillar to post affair until, finally and thankfully, the 6’6” sculpted specimen that is AJ was put out of his misery in the fifth, suffering the type of KO normally associated with the need for immediate retirement.
But, no, if the post-fight press conference was anything to go by, Joshua refuses to accept the evidence of everyone else’s eyes and is intent of continuing.
It can only be hoped that sooner or later, his trainer Ben Davison or promoter Eddie Hearn — someone it is hoped with Joshua’s rather than their own interests at heart — compels him to watch the fight back again.
