TEENAGE TEARAWAY TO KING OF THE WORLD
Joshua turned his life around after drugs conviction in 2011 that almost dealt a KO blow to his career before it had really begun
THE high-vis jacket Anthony Joshua is wearing gives it away.
It is the type offenders wear when carrying out community service and the picture shows a youthful Joshua chopping logs (left).
It was taken in early 2011 when Joshua was serving his punishment after being convicted of possessing drugs.
The conviction almost cost Joshua his boxing career, and trainer Rob McCracken had to plead with the head of GB Boxing not to throw him off the programme.
Joshua, 28, posted the picture on his Instagram account this week as a reminder of how far he has come as a person and a fighter since his tearaway days, running with the wrong crowd in Watford.
“It’s fight week and when you’re looking towards the exciting times, it’s good to look back at the struggle,” he explained.
“It shows where you’ve come from, the journey you are on.
“The world is built on opposites, isn’t it? It’s either success or failure, good or bad. It’s good to show the comparisons really.
“It would have been 2011, something like that. I was giving back to the community.
“I was chopping wood, which was appropriate for me. Actually I don’t know why we don’t do it any more, old-school training. This is where it began and that shows it’s never too late for anyone to start.”
That year was a turning point for Joshua because he sorted out his life and knuckled down in training.
He won silver at the World Amateur Championships in Baku that autumn and then gold at London 2012. The rest, as they say, is history. “Boxing wasn’t that serious back then, it was what it was,” he said. “It was just for fun.
“But then I thought if I smoke and go to the gym on Monday, it’s going to be hard. If I party on Saturday, it will be the same. Being good at what
you do isn’t just about being good in the office or in the gym, it’s what you do when you leave. It was how I was living my life outside of the gym, so I started changing things.”
Although Joshua does not go back to Watford, where it all went wrong for him, he is a frequent visitor to his old gym, Finchley ABC.
He wants to buy it and turn it into a resource for kids as another way of giving back to the community, years after chopping those logs.
Joshua can add the WBO heavyweight title to his WBA Super and IBF crowns if he beats Joseph Parker tonight, but says the respect of everyone at Finchley will always mean more to him. “It’s such blessing to go back to Finchley when there are people who can’t go back to where they’re from because they’ve done a lot of wrong to people along the way,” he said. “They end up living in their house on their own being bitter because they can’t go back to where they’re from and where people truly care about them. “I’ve always kept it real and, win or lose, these people respect me. “That’s why I’m not trying to be the next record holder because I don’t need that status to have respect from the people I know, they respect me already.”