An African Giant Anthony Joshua has fought and won 22 professional bouts. He holds four of the world heavyweight titles and could claim the fifth in April 2019, a feat that has never been done before.
Anthony Oluwafemi Olaseni JoshuaAnthony was born in Watford on 15 October 1989, the child of Nigerian parents, Yeta and Robert Joshua, who divorced when Joshua – known as “Femi” in childhood – was 12. He was partly educated at a boarding school in Nigeria but spent most of his childhood on the Meriden Estate in Garston, part of Watford’s sprawl. He grew up surrounded by his extended family – aunts, uncles, nieces, nephews, cousins beyond counting and an uncertain number of siblings.
Joshua is a knockout artist – he has fought 22 professional bouts without defeat and won 21 of them by battering the other man to the edge of consciousness or beyond. Fight fans love that stuff. But Joshua is loved way beyond the world of boxing. Wembley Stadium is already booked for his 23rd fight on 13 April 2019, the opponent yet to be confirmed. But whoever he is fighting, AJ can sell out Wembley Stadium like a rock star.
An interview that was granted a few days after Joshua fought Russian Alexander Povetkin in front of 90,000 people at Wembley Stadium, and although he radiates fitness and power like nobody I have ever met in my life, he is a weary man when he sprawls his massive frame across a sofa.
“It’s not just the fight. It’s also the training camp,” he says. “You run on adrenaline and eventually your body shuts down. I had really bad flu before the fight – I’ve still got it now – and more than anything my victory was a relief that I got it done. My nose hurts but it’s not broken. And I’m not pissing blood.”
Joshua is a warrior and a gentleman. In the toxic, trash-talking world of boxing, now amplified a million times on social media, Joshua insists on treating his opponents with respect before and after the fight.
And even though future opponents over the next few years are likely to be men who all have PhDs in trash talk – Tyson “The Gypsy King” Fury, Deontay “Bronze Bomber” Wilder, Dillian “The Body Snatcher” Whyte – Joshua will never stoop to the trash-talking sewer just to sell a few more tickets on pay-per-view. “It’s always good to be yourself,” he says. “Don’t put on an act. Some of these fighters, they put on an act.”
Joshua believes in the nobility of boxing, the healing power of boxing, the essential decency of the only sport that can’t be described as a game. But when I ask him if he would want JJ to box, he doesn’t even have to think about it.
“No,” he says. “It’s too hard. It’s a dangerous sport. I want my son to be the best man that he can be, but I don’t want him to be compared to me. You’re not going to be a boxing star without going through heaps of pain. Life is not a highlight reel. A career is not a highlight reel. People see the glamour, the winning. Nobody’s interested in the knocks and bruises, the bad eye, the struggle. My son has the bloodline for it, there’s no doubt about that…”
But fighting for money at this elite level takes something more, he believes. And it is the reason that Joshua enjoys nothing more than watching documentaries about the animal kingdom, studying nature’s grandmasters of the calculated kill. Joshua is a genuinely warm, friendly man but in the ring he has a chip of ice, a mean streak, a vicious instinct that has concluded almost every one of his fights. “When he has them rocking,” said IBF featherweight champion Josh Warrington of Joshua, “he’s savage.”
“I have about seven brothers and sisters,” he says, smiling. “So there is a big pool of us. A tightknit family. My dad was supportive in his own way, even if it was on the phone from Nigeria. My dad was quite stubborn. He wasn’t going to rush to come to me. And I get that and I will always respect my dad. Some people think their parents should have done more, but the way I was raised, I will always have respect for my father.”
Yet despite the large, loving extended family, young Femi grew up really good at sports, but really bad at staying out of trouble. By the time Joshua was in his late teens, the trouble threatened to ruin his life. At 18 he spent two weeks on remand in Reading Prison for “fighting and other crazy stuff” – with a possible sentence of ten years.
“My life could have been completely different,” he says ruefully. “I’m 28 and it’s ten years since my first amateur fight. But I could just be getting out of jail right now.”
