Joshua aims to live up to heavyweight hype
london — Britain’s Olympic champion Anthony Joshua is on the cusp of what he calls “the ultimate double” this weekend and fancies it could help him capture the boxing world’s imagination like no heavyweight since Mike Tyson in his heyday.
Nothing ignites the hype as feverishly as the emergence of a big man with a big punch and the unbeaten 26-year-old super-heavyweight 2012 gold medallist — chiselled, 6ft 6in and with dynamite in his fists — fits the bill perfectly.
On Saturday, he fights America’s IBF champion Charles Martin at London’s O2 Arena and can become the first boxer to hold a version of the professional world heavyweight title while being reigning champion in the Olympics’ heaviest weight division.
“Hmm, Olympic champion and world pro champion at the same time. It’s the ultimate double re- ally. That would be really cool if I could,” Joshua told Reuters.
Only fighters win professional titles while still reigning Olympic gold medallists including Muhammad Ali, who beat Sonny Liston for the world title in 1964 while holding the 1960 Olympic lightheavyweight crown. Boxing greats such as Sugar Ray Leonard, Oscar de la Hoya and Floyd Patterson have also achieved the feat.
As gold medallists at heavyweight or super-heavyweight, Joe Frazier, George Foreman, Lennox Lewis, Wladimir Klitschko and Alexander Povetkin all went on to win world heavyweight belts but not in the same Olympic cycle or at Joshua’s destructive pace.
Yet Joshua so far seems immune to the clamour. “Right now I’ve still got that underdog mentality to keep on proving myself time and again. I’m not going to believe the hype,” he said. —
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