You won’t call me a nobody after I beat AJ!
Takam insists he can shock boxing world
THE laid-back man in the opposite corner beneath the roof of the Principality Stadium tomorrow night believes he can unwrap the superstardom enveloping Anthony Joshua and claim fame for himself.
Carlos Takam comes at Britain’s world heavyweight champion from the opposite end of public recognition.
While Joshua receives widespread adulation, Takam was barely known outside Cameroon — where he was born — and his adopted France when he was unveiled as the stand-in for the injured Kubrat Pulev.
Since he is 36 and has lost only three of his 39 fights, Takam’s anonymity owes much to the secrecy in which he wraps his life away from the ring.
Ask him whether a wife or children will be supporting him at ringside and he says: ‘I prefer to keep my family life private.’ He adds only: ‘Quite a lot of people will be coming from France.’
Well, will even more people be watching in his homeland? He says: ‘The whole of Cameroon. I am receiving many phone calls. That is my country, my roots. I return often to visit my family.’
Takam lives in Paris and has French citizenship, moving there when he turned professional after the 2004 Athens Olympics.
But it was in the bustling port of Douala, in the south of Cameroon, that he discovered the sport he loves. He recalls: ‘They had a boxing club at my high school. I went along to see, tried it and enjoyed it.’
For Cameroonian sport, he was a discovery who would bring them an African championship. The memory kindles a slow smile beneath the hood of his tracksuit.
Takam is so relaxed about the imminent challenge which Joshua describes as ‘going to bloody war’ that he seems to be dozing off.
He is five inches shorter than AJ and the previous occasions on which he has fought heavyweights with world-title credentials produced two of those three defeats — knocked out by Alexander Povetkin in Russia and a close decision loss to Kiwi Joseph Parker.
Venturing abroad again, to Wales, does not disturb him. He sees this as the chance to make his name. ‘I am better known in France and Cameroon,’ he says. ‘But by the third or fourth round, the 80,000 people in the crowd here will know me and like me.
‘The British public know great when they see it. I have a chance to knock out Anthony.
‘If I do it, my life in boxing will change big, but it will not change who I am.’
He draws on Joshua’s Nigerian heritage to explain what the impact would be in Africa.
‘In football, Cameroon v Nigeria is the big derby,’ he says. ‘We share a border. Now we have a boxing derby.’