Anthony Joshua’s good guys and bad guys have always shared a complicated relationship.
My mind wanders back to a bar at The O2 in London and a chat we had 10 years ago this week, when he was processing some of the discomforts of his first 12 months as a professional wrestler.
By then, the stares of strangers had become an everyday occurrence, which is quite typical of those who achieve fame. But Joshua found some instincts hard to shake off in those early days and chafed at his new reality.
“It’s strange,” he told me. ‘I walk down the street and see people looking at me. My brain says, “What the fuck are you looking at?” and you take a second to think: “What they’re doing is normal, they recognize you, that’s all.”’
His inner monologue would eventually lead to a friendlier response and the other party was invariably oblivious to what had been going through his mind.
Anthony Joshua was badly beaten by his British rival Daniel Dubois last weekend.
Joshua was brutally knocked out in five rounds in front of a packed Wembley Stadium.
We both found it quite amusing and he went on to attribute his impulses to the ‘lion’ within because, naturally, it was the lion that created him and a lion is useful when you fight for a living. The lion is something to be preserved and treasured. But he was fighting that too.
Taming that side of his character wasn’t always easy or natural and being Anthony Joshua meant it was necessary: he had more corporate partners than any professional boxer in the modern era and soon they were major brands such as Jaguar and French Connection. who will be joined by Hugo Boss and Beats, who paid fortunes to be linked to his name and might cringe if too much lion appeared in the wrong place.
All of which brings to mind another part of that conversation. He was trying to wink at one of his many sponsors and it came off a bit forced, so he finally gave up: “That sounds a bit fucked up, doesn’t it?” We laugh at that too.
It was endearing, if not fascinating, to watch what he was going through when he was 24, and this was all before he became world champion, remember.
The attention, the expectations, the need to be someone different in different rooms, it all started on a high floor after London 2012 and only increased.
He came a long way from a Watford gang and a Reading remand cell to becoming one of British sport’s biggest stars and I have often detected an identity crisis in Joshua over the decade since our first meeting. several interviews.
A personality trapped between characters, a fighter trapped between styles, a lion between the bars of a golden cage. Eddie Hearn once had a description that got close to the crux of the matter: ‘A bad guy trying to be good’, and it was talked about in the context of how Joshua’s cruel character in the ring was different from that outside.
The problem is that what happens inside the ring has grown to mimic Joshua’s long-ago external confusion. It was confusion written in his bruises last Saturday night when he was given the hideout of his career against Daniel Dubois at Wembley.
That was a fight when he tried to hit a bulldozer and when that didn’t work, he tried to attack his lion again and was crushed.
Joshua has achieved a lot in this sport, having won Olympic gold in 2012.
He is also a two-time heavyweight champion and has consistently sold out stadiums.
But he has arguably never been the same since losing to Andy Ruiz Jr in June 2019.
He looked lost, as he has done so many times since Andy Ruiz beat him five years ago, and he didn’t look much like that bully we remember from the good old days.
Against more serious opponents, unfortunately he hasn’t done it in a long time. If there was a moment last weekend that captured the hazy thinking of it all, it was in his corner before the fifth round.
That’s when his coach, Ben Davison, told him to “roll the dice,” and Joshua responded, “Roll the dice, no.” So he was successful. It wasn’t just Shane McGuigan, on commentary duty, who wondered what the hell they were doing: the sight of Joshua’s head resting on the bottom rope a few minutes later proved him right.
Clear minds were needed, but none were found, and Joshua ended up semi-conscious in the same stadium where he had his finest moment against Wladimir Klitschko seven years ago; Its good and bad have lived under that same arch.
Many in boxing have attributed Joshua’s decline to the first fight with Ruiz, when his sense of invincibility exploded into nothing with a southpaw to his right ear. He became more inhibited, shy, as we say.
Others who know him particularly well hark back to the two-way brutality of Klitschko’s victory and an epiphany that he needed a more tactical team.
In doing so, they also say he lost touch with the rawer nuances of aggression that made him so formidable. He had lost too much of the lion.
Watching him go from one style to another against Dubois and, indeed, the first of his two losses against Oleksandr Usyk, it’s hard to disagree. No one knows where this loss leaves him.
Joshua’s trainer Ben Davison was the first in the ring after last weekend’s knockout, but his prior advice in the corner may have confused Joshua.
Joshua never managed to confront Dubois and did not seem to have a clear plan to stop his rival.
Joshua deserves respect for all he has accomplished, but his legacy is complicated
Not so much about what happens next: He’ll fight again, because he lives for it, even with nine figures of wealth to his name. But in terms of his legacy in the sport, what are people saying? What do you see if you pass him on the street? I hope it’s flattering.
It may never have been as big as the promoters told us, but it bordered on greatness. Big enough to win Olympic gold. Big enough to win the world heavyweight title and do it again after losing it. Big enough for the biggest crowds Wembley has ever seen.
There have been times when it has seemed inauthentic, a touch too corporate and manufactured. There have been moments in which things have been said that ‘sound shit’ and others in which a mask has slipped. ‘What the fuck are you looking at?’ Sometimes it has been difficult to say.
But there have also been countless wonderful nights. And lesser-known grand gestures: A few months ago I learned that when a highly respected boxing journalist died suddenly, Joshua offered to pay for the funeral.
It was Joshua who made a six-figure donation to grassroots boxing clubs that were on the brink of extinction when Covid hit. It is Joshua who plans to join a charity to build a nursing home for struggling boxers.
Beyond the knocks, there is a great deal of decency in what he has done in a world that often seems strange to him. The last time we did an interview, in 2021, he talked about that noise and expectations again: it was so suffocating that he said he wanted to escape to Mars with Elon Musk one day. Or at least to the Amazon and a life with isolated tribes.
Nothing exaggerates as much as boxing and boxers. But he has brought a lot of good to his sport and my only regret is that much of the bad was apparently lost when a lion hit him hard around the ear.
The VAR continues to play dumb
I was at the London Stadium last weekend to witness West Ham’s terrible efforts against Chelsea and I would say that Julen Lopetegui and his team got what they deserved, except for one disconcerting moment when Wesley Fofana brought down Crysencio Summerville and the VAR He did not concede any penalties.
They felt that the tug on Summerville’s arm was too fleeting and generated two thoughts.
First, Chelsea have signed players for double-digit millions whose release time has been less fleeting than that pull. Second, this system is finding new ways to look stupid.
Crysencio Summerville (right) appeared to be removed by Wesley Fofana (left)
VAR overturned penalty after deciding Summerville’s arm grab was only ‘fleeting’
Tottenham are crazy about keeping Son in the dark
There is a lot to enjoy about the madness at Tottenham under Ange Postecoglou.
The decision to leave Son Heung-min in the dark for a new contract falls into a completely different category.