Joshua hasn’t Cracked it yet
BRIT STILL ON RISE
ANTHONY JOSHUA has been told he’s far from the finished article – just two wins from becoming the undisputed king of the heavyweight division.
The WBA and IBF champion’s trainer Rob McCracken believes Joshua, who laced up the gloves for the first time at 18, is still developing.
Ahead of Saturday’s Cardiff clash with WBO title holder Joseph Parker, McCracken said: “I don’t think AJ is near his full potential yet.
“It’s funny with boxers – you go through the start, the middle and the end.
“He’s still somewhere in the middle, where he totally enjoys it and it’s an adventure for him.
“The middle of your career is the best bit because you are just starting to realise you are not bad at it.
“You are learning things and they are not too hard to put into what you are doing and you are thinking, ‘I’m not bad, I can really be good at this’. I think he is at that phase.
“He is not at the latter end, which is ‘Oh, f*** it, this is a chore’. And he’s not at the start, where he doesn’t know if he is any good.”
GB Boxing performance director McCracken has been with Joshua, 28, since he arrived at the amateur team’s Sheffield base in 2010.
He helped turn Joshua into an Olympic gold medallist and became his professional coach before he fought Wladimir Klitschko last year at Wembley.
The pair sit and watch the ring greats to pick up tips, with McCracken adding: “We watch the old fighters. Not too old, just 20 or 30 years ago.
“George Foreman when he was coming through, Olympic champion, the way he dismantled Joe Frazier was fantastic.
“He set people up with the jab. He would set people up and then work on the angle with his feet.
“So you just look at different people and how they did things. We look at Evander Holyfield and some of the stuff he did coming through.
“I know he was a smaller fighter than AJ, but some of the combination punches, we looked at that.
“We look at current fighters as well and you can always pick something up. You can always learn from the very best fighters. That is what you are trying to do.”