The good and bad of Anthony Joshua have always shared a complicated relationship.
My mind goes back to a bar in The O2 in London and a chat we had 10 years ago this week, when he was processing some of the awkwardness around his first 12 months as a professional fighter.
By then, stares from strangers had become a daily occurrence, which is typical enough for those who come into fame. But Joshua was finding a few instincts hard to shed in those early days and they were chafing against his new reality.
‘It’s weird,’ he told me. ‘I walk along the street and see people looking at me. My brain that is like, “What the f*** are you looking at?” and it takes a second to think, “What they are doing is normal, they recognise you, that’s all”.’
His inner monologue would eventually take him to a friendlier response and the other party was invariably oblivious to what had passed through his mind.
Anthony Joshua was soundly beaten by British rival Daniel Dubois last weekend
Joshua was brutally knocked out inside five rounds in front of a packed Wembley Stadium
We both found it pretty amusing and he went on to pin his urges to the ‘lion’ within because, naturally, it was the lion that made him and a lion is handy when you make your living from fights. The lion is something to be kept and treasured. But he was also battling with it, too.
Taming that side of his character wasn’t always easy or natural and the business of being Anthony Joshua meant it was necessary — he had more corporate partners than any pro boxer in the modern era and they were major brands like Jaguar and French Connection, soon to be joined by Hugo Boss and Beats, who all paid fortunes to be tied to his name and might wince if too much lion popped up in the wrong place.
All of which brings to memory another part of that conversation. He was trying to insert a nod to one of his many sponsors and it came out a little contrived, so in the end he gave up: ‘That sounds a bit a s***, doesn’t it?’ We laughed at that as well.
It was endearing, not to mention fascinating to observe what he was navigating as a 24-year-old, and this was all before he became a world champion, remember.
The attention, the expectations, the need to be someone different in different rooms, all started on a high floor after London 2012 and only rose.
He travelled an awfully long way from a Watford gang and a remand cell in Reading to becoming one of the biggest stars in British sport and I’ve often detected an identity crisis in Joshua across the subsequent decade since our first of several interviews.
A personality caught between personas, a fighter trapped between styles, a lion between the bars of a golden cage. Eddie Hearn once had a description that got close to the crux of it — ‘A bad guy trying to be good’ — and it was spoken in the context of how Joshua’s vicious character in the ring was different to the one outside.
The problem is that what occurs inside the ring has grown to mimic Joshua’s external confusion from way back when. It was a confusion written in his bruises last Saturday night, when he was given the hiding of his career against Daniel Dubois at Wembley.
That was a fight when he tried to jab against a bulldozer and when that didn’t work he sought to reengage his lion and got flattened.
Joshua has achieved so much in the sport, having won Olympic gold back in 2012
He is also a two-time heavyweight champion who has consistently filled stadiums
But he has arguably never been the same since losing to Andy Ruiz Jr in June 2019
He looked lost, as he has done so many times since Andy Ruiz beat him five years ago, and he didn’t seem much like that bruiser we remember from the good days.
Against the most serious opponents, he hasn’t done so in a long while, sadly. If there was one moment last weekend that captured the cluttered thinking of it all, it came in his corner before the fifth round.
That was when his trainer, Ben Davison, told him to ‘roll the dice’, and Joshua replied: ‘Roll the dice, innit.’ So he came out swinging. It wasn’t only Shane McGuigan, on commentary duty, who wondered what on earth they were doing — the sight of Joshua’s head propped up by the bottom rope a few minutes later proved him right.
Clear minds were needed, none were found, and Joshua wound up semi-conscious in the same stadium where he had his finest hour against Wladimir Klitschko seven years ago; his good and bad have lived under that very same arch.
Many in boxing have traced Joshua’s decline to the first Ruiz fight, when his sense of invincibility was exploded into a ringing nothingness by a left hand to his right ear. He became more inhibited, gun shy, as we say.
Others who know him particularly well go back further to the two-way brutality of the Klitschko win and an epiphany that he needed a more tactical gear.
In doing so they also say he lost touch with the rawest shades of aggression that made him so formidable. He had lost a bit too much of the lion.
Watching him fumble from one style to another against Dubois, and indeed the first of his two losses against Oleksandr Usyk, it’s hard to disagree. Quite where this loss leaves him is anyone’s guess.
Joshua’s trainer Ben Davison was the first into the ring after last weekend’s knockout, but his advice in the corner beforehand may have confused Joshua
Joshua never got to grips with Dubois, and did not seem to have a clear plan in place to stop his rival
Joshua deserves respect for all he has accomplished, but his legacy is a complicated one
Not so much in what happens next — he’ll fight again, because he lives for it, even with nine figures of wealth to his name. But in terms of his legacy in the sport, what do people say? What do they see if they pass him in the street? I hope it’s flattering.
He may have never been as great as the promoters told us, but he touched greatness. Great enough to win Olympic gold. Great enough to win the heavyweight world title and to do so again after it was lost. Great enough for the biggest crowds Wembley has seen.
There have been times when he has sometimes seemed less than authentic, a touch too corporate and manufactured. There have been times when the stuff that ‘sounds s***’ has been spoken and others when a mask has slipped. ‘What the f*** are you looking at?’ Sometimes it has been hard to say.
But there have also been countless great nights. And great gestures lesser known — I learned a few months back that when a hugely-respected boxing journalist passed away suddenly, Joshua offered to pay for the funeral.
It was Joshua who stumped up a six-figure donation to grassroots boxing clubs on the brink of extinction when Covid hit. It is Joshua who plans to join up with a charity to build a care home for struggling boxers.
Beyond the punches, there’s a vast amount of decency in what he’s done in a world he has often found strange. The last time we did an interview, in 2021, he spoke again about that noise and the expectations — it was so suffocating he said he wanted one day to escape to Mars with Elon Musk. Or at the very least to the Amazon and a life with uncontacted tribes.
Nothing does exaggeration like boxing and boxers. But he has brought plenty of good to his sport and the only regret is too much of the bad was seemingly lost when a lion took a hefty clip around the ear.
VAR still playing the fool
I was at the London Stadium last weekend to witness West Ham’s dreadful efforts against Chelsea and would say Julen Lopetegui and his team got what they deserved, except for one baffling moment when Wesley Fofana yanked down Crysencio Summerville and no penalty was awarded by the VAR.
They felt the pull on Summerville’s arm was too fleeting and it spawned two thoughts.
One, Chelsea have signed players for double-digit millions whose pitch time has been less fleeting than that tug. Two, this system is finding new ways to make itself look silly.
Crysencio Summerville (right) appeared to be pulled back by Wesley Fofana (left)
VAR overturned the penalty call after deciding the grab on Summerville’s arm was only ‘fleeting’
Tottenham are mad to keep Son in the dark
There’s a lot to enjoy about the madness at Tottenham under Ange Postecoglou.
The decision to leave Son Heung-min in the dark over a new contract falls into a different category altogether
