Joshua’s rags to riches tale
Joseph Parker’s opponent on April 1 has been taught some hard lessons.
Anthony Joshua is a rags to riches story to rival the script of any Rocky movie. But his remarkable tale isn’t Hollywood fantasy, it’s a reallife drama from the tough streets of Watford to the realistic goal of becoming a boxing billionaire.
He’s about to take another step along this unlikely path when he fights New Zealand’s WBO world champion Joseph Parker in Cardiff on April 1 (NZ Time). There will be three major belts on the line in an historic day, another date with a destiny that Joshua seems increasingly comfortable with.
There are many key moments in the career of this 28-year-old whose smile and laugh belie the intimidation factor he brings with him to the ring.
The obvious ones are the superheavyweight gold medal victory at London 2012 to sign of his short amateur career and his get-off-thecanvas victory against Wladimir Kltischko at Wembley less than five years later to become a unified world champion in the professional ranks.
Then there was the day his beloved mother Yeta came to take him home after one term at a strict boarding school in Nigeria, which he describes as the toughest weeks of his life.
Or the day his cousin Ben Ileyemi invited him along to Finchley Amateur Boxing Club as an 18-year-old obsessed with body building.
How about the day a judge gave him a community service order after he admitted a charge of drug possession, a decision that effectively rescued his Olympic dream.
‘‘I was looking at a jail sentence so my only ambition [at that time] was to be found not guilty,’’ he told the Sunday Times of being stopped by police for speeding only to have a bag of cannabis discovered in the car.
‘‘That was it. When I got past that and was found not guilty, I carried on boxing. The arrest changed a lot. It forced me to grow up and accept my responsibilities. I would have been in drug gangs and prison but for boxing.
‘‘That was part of my story and I’m here now and that’s all that matters – I’m still going.’’
He still lives with his mother in the north London flat he bought with the purse from his first professional bout. Yeta Odusanya is a social worker who came to Britain from Nigeria in the 1990s and his father, Robert, is half-Nigerian, half-Irish.
He still has many of the friends he made while he was growing up, but can hang out with a different crowd too.
‘‘I get to meet people I would never have met before,’’ he said. ‘‘When we were younger we would always ride our bikes past these mansions and say, ‘I wonder who lives in there?’ Now I’ve met the likes of Barry Hearn, who own those houses, and they’ve told me how to go about achieving these things. I’ve changed my lifestyle and mentality.’’
Before the Klitschko fight he had spoken on the phone to Dr Dre and Elton John — ‘‘he’s from Watford too’’ — but he is far more comfortable with his family around him, especially his young son ‘‘JJ’’.
Keeping his mum happy is a priority.
‘‘She’s proud of how I carry myself more than what I do in the ring. If people annoy me, I respond. I can’t be perfect at all times, but when you look at the overall package, she’s happy with the maturity I show. Because what I do does reflect on her.’’
All that glitters isn’t always gold though. There has been a recent slip-up when he was slammed on social media for sexist comments made around the different attitude he has to disciplining his niece rather than the softer approach he takes to his son.
In his words, ‘‘boxing is the easy part’’ and in an increasingly pressurised life he takes solace in the surroundings of a grimy gym or the ropes and canvas of his ‘‘office’’.
‘‘Fighting isn’t just about aggression. It is a way of life, it is about discipline, expressing yourself. When I am in the gym and fighting I feel calm and at peace.’’
And he’s determined to make the most of it, driven to be the best, the first man to hold all four major heavyweight belts – without suffering the pitfalls of so many champions in this most basic, brutal and bountiful sport.
‘‘The Tysons, the Riddick Bowes, the Holyfields — we all know their stories outside the ring and I always wanted to manage that,’’ Joshua said. ‘‘The most extravagant thing I do is help people. I don’t need a lot and if I were to fight for $400 million I don’t think it would change me a lot.’’
He bought a BMW for Sean Murphy, his former amateur coach, and it is understood that he made an offer to buy his old amateur club, Finchley ABC, which was turned down. He did recently buy them a bus to get the kids to tournaments though.
But it is not all splashing the cash: when training, he stays in a flat in the same block in Sheffield where he lived when an amateur.
He has, however, bought a house, in Whetstone, north London, but won’t live in it until later this year.
‘‘My uncle is an architect, so he’s helping. You want to get it right and it’s not a house that was ready to move into, but a house I saw potential in. I see it as a family house for the immediate family. Everyone will come for Christmas and birthdays.’’
Joshua has a massive fan base in Nigeria, where he still has family.
Joshua was only 11 when he was relocated from Watford to Abuja. Having initially thought that he was going to Africa for a holiday, he then found himself enrolled in a boarding school and a system that was unlike anything that he had known while growing up in Britain.
‘‘Every morning we would be woken up at 5.30 and then we had to fetch water,’’ he told The Times. ‘‘You had to heat the water up by putting a hot iron in it, then you had to make sure all your school clothes were cleaned and ironed.
‘‘The discipline was tough. Sometimes the whole block would just get punished. It might be the cane, or you would stand and squat and hold it for 30 minutes. It was tough.
‘‘We got beaten, but that’s my culture, beating. The [British] government raise your kids now, parents aren’t allowed to raise their kids, because there is so much control about what you do or what you say.
‘‘In [Nigerian] culture it’s family, outside support, everyone has a role in raising the kids. I wasn’t prepared for it. I thought I was going there on holiday. I think my mum was trying to do some business there, maybe she had it in her mind. You don’t just randomly decide to move there. She might have been thinking about it but didn’t inform us because we were kids.
‘‘At the time you think, ‘Why?’ but as you get older you think it was good that you experienced it. It was good for me.’’
Once he got past his troubled teens, those disciplines helped shape the man he is today.
And Joshua is a superstar. He has brought more to boxing than just a chiselled frame and a frightening right hand. He has encouraged a whole new audience in the UK and the 90,000 that packed Wembley and the 80,000 expected to turn up for his fight with Parker are proof of that.
Joshua has become a true crossover athlete, a hero to those dismissively referred to as ‘‘the casuals’’ by hardcore boxing fans. Under Armour, his major sponsor, has ensured that his face is on billboards around the globe, he told GQ magazine recently that he wanted to be a billionaire, while the magazine put him on its front page along with the headline ‘‘The Greatest?’’ That was less than 12 months after the death of Muhammad Ali, a move some might have viewed as an act of sacrilege.
But the smiling assassin has carried it off. He is a people’s champion as much as a boxing champion.
Joshua hopes that he can be an inspiration to others than those who are able to pass through the turnstiles or afford a pay-per-view. He talks of wanting to eventually enter politics to try to change the lives of the less fortunate. He does charity work and speaks to troubled kids and prison inmates.
‘‘Giving people a bit of inspiration, helping people … there is always the ambition to move forward, that is always what I preach.
‘‘I always think my role is to inspire people. I know for a fact there will be a kid somewhere who looks at me and thinks ‘I can do that’ and will find their way to a gym and end up doing more than I have done.’’
Rocky Balboa couldn’t have said it better.
I would have been in drug gangs and prison but for boxing. Anthony Joshua