It is a testament to how great Anthony Joshua has been, and even more to the potential which bubbles inside of his massive body, that he is questioned so often, that his failures are detailed so regularly. This is a guy who started boxing as a teen-ager as a means of escaping trouble on the streets. Boxing, though, just didn’t put him on the straight and narrow path, it changed his life and made him one of the most recognizable figures in the world.
The former unified heavyweight champion brings a three-fighting winning streak into his pay-per-view bout on Friday in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, against former UFC heavyweight champion Francis Ngannou. Ngannou is 0-1 as a boxer, having performed far better than expected but still losing a split decision to Tyson Fury on Oct. 28 in Riyadh. The card streams on DAZN and PPV.com Friday beginning at 1 p.m. ET.
Joshua is a -450 favorite at DraftKings but, fairly or unfairly, many continue to question him. The line of demarcation in his career is June 1, 2019, when he was knocked out by late replacement Andy Ruiz in New York in what was expected to be nothing more than a run-of-the-mill title defense.
Prior to fighting Ruiz, Joshua had won a super heavyweight Olympic gold medal at home in London at the 2012 Games. He won the IBF title less than three years after turning pro and was a unified champion when he stopped the legendary Wladimir Klitschko in the 11th round of a stirring battle before more than 90,000 fans at Wembley Stadium in London on April 29, 2017.
Joshua was 22-0 with 20 KOs, held three of the four major heavyweight title belts and seemed on a fast track to the International Boxing Hall of Fame on the night he made his U.S. debut in New York when he faced Ruiz.
He put Ruiz down in the third, and that’s the precise moment his life changed. Ruiz got up, knocked him down four times and stopped him in one of the biggest upsets in the division. After going 22-0 to start his career, Joshua then went 5-3 in his next eight fights, and for the most part, he didn’t fight with either the same confidence or aggressiveness that he had shown before.
That brings him to the Ngannou fight, and while there is much still to be learned about Ngannou after 10 rounds with Fury, the one thing that is plainly obvious that he can punch. Ngannou dropped Fury in the third, and had he been busier, he might have won that fight instead of dropping a close split decision.
After Joshua showed signs of being his old self in a one-sided, fifth-round stoppage of Otto Wallin in Riyadh two days before Christmas, the fight was made with Ngannou.
And while in heavyweight boxing one punch can rewrite the history books in a hurry, there are plenty of signs that Joshua is heading back to being the monster he was after the Klitschko fight.
“Every fight leads to somewhere, so this fight is my everything; my soul, my spirit, my mind, my body,” Joshua said. “We’ll see where it leads me. Right now, I’m not thinking about any championship belts, or anything. My main focus is Francis. Realistically, it’s getting through an intense, focused training camp, because how I train is how I fight. If I get victory in my training camp, I am sure I get victory on the night [of the fight]. We’ll put the belts on hold because my focus is on getting through training camp and getting to the fight successfully.”
Joshua dragged himself off the canvas against Klitschko, one of the all-time great punchers and finishers, in a demonstration of great courage, fortitude and will to win.
But after the KO by Ruiz, which is one of those things that can happen when two men over 230 pounds are throwing punches at each other with violent intentions, he didn’t seem to have that same spirit. He fought tentatively and cautiously, even though he’s vastly better than just about anyone he’ll step into the ring against.
He’s getting a lot of credit in some circles for his three-fight winning streak, which came after he dropped a pair of decisions to unified champion Oleksandr Usyk. Those three wins were over Jermaine Franklin, Robert Helenius and Wallin, bouts he was expected to win going away.
One big change, though, was in the Wallin fight. He hired Ben Davison — Fury’s former trainer — to train him for that bout. And Joshua fought with a renewed sense of self-belief and vigor.
“It’s really good working with him and the whole team at the academy,” Joshua said. “They have helped a lot. I still speak a lot with Derrick James in the States, but being home and having someone just as good, I’m just searching for greatness really. Continuously searching for greatness, how to elevate myself, push forward in every aspect of my game, and this is just another challenge. During each challenge, I find out so much about myself. Even though I already know who I am, I know I am going to discover new things about myself and things that can take me to new heights.”
If he really believes that, and it comes from deep within, well, it’s going to be very difficult to get past that Anthony Joshua. When he has that attitude and fights with that kind of ferocity, there’s few, if any, better.
We just need to see it for ourselves yet again.
