Joshua reveals: I’m injured too but that just won’t stop me
TO SAY that Anthony Joshua was disconcerted when the beefy Bulgarian due to be his fourth challenger for his world heavyweight crown withdrew from next Saturday’s slugfest in Cardiff’s Principality Stadium is an understatement.
Surprised, confused? AJ was ‘p****d off’. Not because he suspects that the replacement, Carlos Takam, will be harder to add to his perfect knockout record than Kubrat Pulev.
But because he would have to be close to death’s door himself before he pulled out of a fight.
‘If only he knew the injuries I’ve faced in training camp,’ said Joshua, leaving the inference about Pulev’s ‘strained pectoral muscle’ hanging in the evening air at the Sheffield gym AJ shares with his old Olympic team-mates.
He went on to talk for the first time about the litany of ailments which have afflicted him before important bouts. All was not well immediately prior to his biggest fight of all, against Wladimir Klitschko at Wembley Stadium six months ago.
‘I went for a Thai massage,’ he says. ‘She pulled my arm right down by my leg and it cramped up my back. I swear I was walking bent double for two weeks. But we crack on. When I boxed Dominic Breazeale in my first world title defence I had glandular fever. Just crack on. Before that I fought Michael Sprott with a fractured back. Crack on.’
The wearer of the IBF and WBA belts admits that cracking on regardless does not always meet with the approval of his trainer Rob McCracken.
Joshua adds: ‘Rob doesn’t like it. He says to me, “Josh, if I ever have to pull you out of a fight you have to listen to me”.
‘Well, I don’t like that. You build up so much to this one big moment. Then because of a niggle you’re going to let it go?
‘Anyway, once you’re in there, in the ring, the adrenaline takes over. Touch wood, I don’t think I’d ever pull out of a fight. Not unless it was deadly serious.’
The majority of boxers often go into fights carrying injuries without complaint. They do so even when there is much less money in the wallet than the minimum £10million Joshua will reportedly add on Saturday.
Another crock of gold is in the offing next year if Joshua’s promoter Eddie Hearn can come to terms with rival WBC champion Deontay Wilder for a unification fight.
The American, like most of the boxing public, is clamouring for that bonanza but Hearn says: ‘Deontay has a 50-50 financial split in his head. Over my dead body. That was OK with Wladimir, who brought so much to the table. But Wilder hasn’t had a really big fight yet.
‘I’d like him to build up by taking on Dillian Whyte at the O2 in February.’
If Whyte were to win, Joshua would jump at a rematch with his London rival. Why?
‘I wanted him to replace Pulev in Cardiff,’ says Joshua. ‘But Eddie told me I had to go down one place in the IBF rankings to Takam to fulfil my mandatory defence. Otherwise I may have texted Vitali Klitschko to ask his brother if he could be ready in 12 days to fight me again.
‘I thought Wladimir might still have been obsessed enough about me to come back for a second fight. Disappointed when he retired. Either would have done. I reckon there should be four or five memorable fights in my career. Against Dillian and Wlad we’ve had two. Loved it. Why not do it again?’
Wilder makes more sense, though not necessarily in the USA. Joshua says: ‘It used to be that everyone had to go to America to crack it. Now they’re coming over here to crack it. Boxing is bubbling here. Let’s not turn off the heat just yet. Let’s keep it bubbling.’
First he has to deal with Takam, an Afro-Frenchman who has been stopped but once in his 39 fights and carries enough power to have scored 27 of his 35 victories inside the distance.
With that in mind, when Hearn told him ‘We couldn’t let Pulev come out to fight before an 80,000 crowd on live television less than fully fit’, Joshua was only half joking when he replied, ‘Why not? I’m the one who’s now got to fight this guy with a big punch and a head like a block of cement.’
Then he added the most startling revelation to his case history: ‘A strained pec, Kubrat? I’ve had a shoulder injury through camp for this fight.’
Only one thing for it, AJ: Crack on.