The megastar with a £350k watch who lives at home with his mum
THE watch on Anthony Joshua’s wrist costs four times the price of the top of the range Jaguar in which he could drive home from Cardiff after Saturday night’s world heavyweight title fight.
Except he didn’t have to buy either of them. Nor does he have to pick up the tab when he takes friends out to dinner or pay for much, if any, of his clothing.
The only significant item for which AJ has forked out of late was last month’s purchase of a house on the north London-Hertfordshire borders.
A five-to-six-bedroom property in a desirable part of Whetstone but in need of renovation that is likely to have made a dent of some four to five million in his burgeoning bank balance.
But he won’t he be flying the maternal nest any time soon.
‘I saw potential,’ says Joshua. ‘But there’s work to be done. It’s not ready to move into. Maybe 18 months. You want to get it right. I see it as a family house. Everyone will come for Christmas and birthdays.’
The house is a 15-minute drive from the former council flat he still shares with his mother in Golders Green and not much further to the £500,000 Finchley apartment he bought for his ex-girlfriend and their infant son.
The £15m purse he received for ending the career of Klitschko and the £10m he is guaranteed for ‘knocking the cement block’ off Afro-Frenchman Carlos Takam in the Principality Stadium are just the foundation stones of the billion-pound fortune the 28-year-old is aiming to build in the commercial marketplace as well as the prize-ring.
That aforementioned timepiece has been created by Swiss master craftsmen at Audemars Piguet, whose prices start from around £20,000.
Joshua’s watch has been custom designed for him in gold, studded with diamonds. The back commemorates his victory over Klitschko. How much, dare we ask?
AJ grins impishly and says: ‘My AP watch? That’s a bad boy! It would have cost about £350,000 to buy.’
And that’s just the gift. Then there’s the chunky fee for endorsing the brand. As there is from Jaguar, whose £80,000 Range Rover wheels he takes delight in driving,
Then there’s the much-desired Nando’s Black Card, given only to the rich and famous.
Then there’s the contracts with Under Armour in whose kit he is seen most frequently, the Lynx deodorant under his arms, his must-have Beats headphones, his Lucozade drinks… along with the rest of his 14 or more sponsors. And all the while he keeps his head firmly on those enormous shoulders.
Joshua says: ‘If I earned four hundred million dollars a fight I don’t think it would change me or my lifestyle very much. I know what I need to get through my day. I don’t need a lot.
‘The most extravagant thing I do is help people. There’s no charity I’m affiliated to but I do a lot first hand. I’m helping a lot of families who are doing much better than they were a year or two ago. I think that’s the best thing about me.’
Boxers have not usually enjoyed corporate largesse on anything remotely approaching the Joshua scale.
Muhammad Ali became an exception but not for the most part until after he retired. From before Mike Tyson, who squandered his $300m hard-earned in the ring, to Floyd Mayweather, who seems to be working his way through his $600m as fast as he can, there have been few endorsements for prize-fighters, if any.
Joshua surveys that landscape and says: ‘We all know the stories of what happened to the Tysons, the Riddick Bowes and the Evander Holyfields outside the ring. I’ve always wanted to take control of all that.
‘I keep my life simple. I can’t go to the shops any more, So no more visits to the launderette the morning after fights now.
‘I know the big billboards are going up showing me and my partner businesses but I don’t go looking for them.
‘I’m still me. I don’t live in celebrity circles. I go on shows like Graham Norton because they’re not work, they’re fun.
‘I did Bear Grylls, which was a good experience. But only once. Never again. That’s nuts. Basically I live between here and home in London.’
‘Here’ is the training facility in Sheffield which he shares with his coach Rob McCracken’s Team GB Olympic boxers. He will not shift camp to Cardiff until tomorrow, which is late for a big fight week. Cardiff will be an astonishing 80,000 sell-out for a fight in which the initial opponent, mandatory challenger Kubrat Pulev, was not much more of a box-office attraction than Takam, his replacement.
Joshua’s popularity spreads far beyond boxing, not least into the business community. His explanation: ‘I think’s it’s about understanding the journey’.
His infectious humour and smiling charm also play heavily into it but to a considerable extent he is right.
AJ’s journey is one of redemption. It is a modern morality tale of a boy who climbed away from street-gangs and a drugs conviction to make himself into a golden British Olympic hero and then find global stardom.