Anthony Joshua, after everything

The first time I encountered Anthony Joshua he was looking for a home. Or, if not a home, a team; a support network; some guidance. He wasn't necessarily lost, but he was clearly in search of direction, only too aware that the path he was about to take was known to be rough. What he needed more than anything, I suppose, was a manager, a promoter, or someone just to say: "Here, AJ, come this way. Follow me."

He had with him an Olympic gold medal, collected at the 2012 Games in London, and this medal represented many things prior to Joshua turning professional. It was not only the skeleton key capable of opening any door he wished to open, but it was also his compass to show him where to go and how to get there. Such was its power, in fact, even on occasions when he left it at home, as he did that night in Vauxhall, it was still the first thing any of us saw when the 6-foot-6 heavyweight entered a room. 

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The second thing was his smile. That too was golden and better than most by virtue of how it utilized every part of his face: the mouth, the eyes, the cheeks. With it leading the way, like a torch, Joshua sauntered through our gym that night to greet the dozen or so people inside it with the same geniality for which he was already, at the age of 23, famous. There wasn't a single hand in the gym he didn't shake, nor one person whose name he didn't want to know. It was, for Joshua, not just courtesy, but intel. He wanted to know who these people were. He wanted to know what they did. Or perhaps what they could do. 

For now, the Olympic champion's army was an army of one. The only person who accompanied him that night was his cousin, also a boxer, and one got the impression that in 2013 Joshua was quite fond of traveling light. He liked the freedom it brought. The freedom to roam, that is. The freedom to choose. By traveling light, there was no chorus of voices to distract him and no hands pulling him in this direction or that. He could instead be steered, for the time being at least, by his own instincts and feelings. 

Besides, this was a big decision. There were other offers, other gyms to visit, and other people eager to impress him. This rendezvous beneath a railway arch in central London was merely one stop on a lengthy tour that year and Joshua, very much his own man, was adamant he would not be rushed into making a rash decision or enlisting with the wrong army. It was possibly for that reason he made a point of treating everybody the way he, a solo traveler, would hope to be treated in what is a notoriously cruel business. He treated them with kindness, respect. Most of all, he gave them his time. 

Even at age 23, Olympic gold medalist Anthony Joshua was always the center of attention.Danny Lawson - PA Images via Getty Images

By the autumn Joshua had finally made his decision. His team, he decided, was going to be Matchroom Boxing, which meant his promoter would be Eddie Hearn and everybody else, including David Haye and Adam Booth, whom he once met beneath a railway arch in Vauxhall, were back to being outsiders, observers, rivals. 

At Matchroom Boxing, Joshua had found his tribe. He knew it the moment he first met the Hearns — Eddie and Barry — at their lavish home in Brentwood, England and saw within its walls the fruits of their labor. It was, for Joshua, alluring, aspirational. He wanted to know how they did it. He wanted the same for himself. 

"For the future, when I headline Wembley and stuff, I'll definitely look at it as a business a bit more," he said before boxing Denis Bakhtov in his ninth pro fight. "I understand that Eddie's got to get paid, my trainer's got to get paid, my manager's got to get paid and I've got to get paid. I understand these things. That's how a business runs. I've got my limited company set up and it's making money, paying people. This is the road I'm on now and I've got to make it work. It's a good mentality to have at a young age. If you look at it like a business, I'm at the forefront of my business, so I have to be successful and look after myself. I am my own boss. I've got to make sure I run the company properly.

"I think only something like 3% of boxers make enough money to retire. It's not forever, is it? Most have a career of about 10 or 15 years max. If you're really good, you'll maybe have five years of making big paydays, and that's supposed to last you a lifetime. With big paydays come luxurious lifestyles. You've just got to be really careful. I've got this opportunity in boxing and I won't take it for granted at all.

"I want to be able to control my own destiny. It's not about the money; it's not about pleasing anyone. I'm doing this for myself now. That's my mentality."

By demonstrating a capacity to wear the hats of both businessman and boxer, Joshua believed he was bucking a trend, or proving to the rest, those who later cry poverty or exploitation, how business in boxing could and should be done. Not enough just to be physically superior to his peers, Joshua soon became one of the many high achievers in elite sport who aimed to do it all. He craved, in the fashion of most athletes with ambition and ego, both maximum control and maximum reward.

July 25, 2013: Anthony Joshua (right) and Eddie Hearn attend a press conference to announce his signing to Matchroom.Scott Heavey via Getty Images

"He's an excellent businessman," Hearn said of Joshua in 2017. "He's more or less self-educated and has learned his own way. He's building his own brand as well. Yeah, we're doing the promotion on the boxing side of things, and Freddie [Cunningham] and those guys do the commercial stuff, but he's really driving the ship, especially on his commercial stuff. He's very involved in the boxing side, too, with the shows and stuff like that. He has a very active mind, and when he's away from camp he likes to learn and gather information. 

"When he's in camp, he's completely focused and motivated. There are never any distractions in camp. The change in Anthony Joshua comes when the gloves go on in the changing room. That is when you see a completely different person. I can't tell you how different that person is from the lovable, smiling Anthony Joshua. I have never seen him smile once when those gloves are on. It is all business. He's menacing, he's scary, he's imposing. That moment when he's hitting the pads, leaves the dressing room and walks to the ring, he is a completely different animal. It's incredible to see."

On the night of April 29, 2017, that animal knocked out Wladimir Klitschko in the 11th round of an epic heavyweight fight at Wembley Stadium before a crowd of 90,000 people. It was the best win of Joshua's pro career to that point and remains his best win almost a decade later. Not only that, the occasion served to bring the Londoner a whole new level of attention and fame. If Joshua was the animal, Wembley Stadium was the zoo. 

"He's got time for the public," Hearn said that year. "You've seen him at public workouts and weigh-ins, staying an hour or two afterward to sign autographs and do pictures. He wants to be that person. Sometimes that's not possible, though, and you can't be that person all the time. 

"He loves nothing more than going to the park with his mates and having a kickabout; popping out for a bite to eat. But those things get taken away from you, not because you don't want to socialize with the public, but because you can't lift a fork and put food in your mouth without being mobbed wherever you go. He's had to adapt. But he's very happy with it. It's not like he's phoning me up and saying, 'I can't handle this.' He realizes the role he's playing and the responsibility he has as a role model and an ambassador for British boxing. That's why you'll never really see him trash talk or swearing. He wants to try to be a role model. He's not perfect, but, like he said after the Klitschko fight, he's trying."

October 23, 2013: Anthony Joshua at Finchley Boxing Club ahead of his second professional fight.Dick Barnatt via Getty Images

The next time I encountered Anthony Joshua, he was not alone but surrounded, holding court at Sheffield's English Institute of Sport. He was 10 days from fighting Alexander Povetkin, again at Wembley Stadium, on Sept. 22, 2018, and had by now the WBA, IBF and WBO heavyweight titles to his name. 

To sell his upcoming defense, his promotional and management teams had corralled members of the media to his gym in Sheffield, where for four hours we looked for that crucial nod of approval, or that welcoming wave, or that shout from someone of note to confirm we had been summoned for our five minutes. Until then, we just waited, all of us. We checked watches and clocks and tutted so loudly in unison that we created the sound of cicadas at night.

Mostly, though, we did as we were told and remained in our pens. Like cattle, there were writers, photographers and sponsors in pen one, film crews in pen three, and then between these two pens, ensuring there was no cross-contamination, you had members of Joshua's team, all of whom varied in both size and importance. Big or small, these were the people largely responsible for keeping the herd, those wanting something from Joshua, both in line and under control. There were even metal barriers and security guards to help them.

Perhaps, given both the demand and Joshua's fame, it could be no other way.

"In boxing, I think he's as famous as we'll see," said Eddie Hearn, his promoter. "There's so much needed to create a profile like Anthony Joshua. To have all of it, it's a one-off. Are you going to find someone as articulate? Are you going to find someone whose story is like his? Are you going to find someone as good? Are you going to find someone as good-looking, or as athletic, or as perfect?"

As it would in any museum, perfection required surveillance and protection. That's why all those working for Joshua that day were prepared to use their bodies as either barricades or bubble wrap, not wanting even the slightest scratch to spoil their masterwork. Only Rob McCracken, Joshua's trainer and a former pro himself, stood back and watched. 

"Anthony totally understands what's required from him," McCracken said. "He understands that fighters also have to entertain. He understands what's required to make an event. 

"I'm always saying to him, 'Look, you've got to take this seriously; you've got to stay off social media and do 10 interviews fewer than you normally would.' But you're dealing with a different generation. Anthony is part of this younger generation who live it. I couldn't tell you how much time this generation spends on social media, but I'm sure it's a lot. It's entertainment."

At one point Joshua's fists whacked a speedball to the sound of the Bill Withers classic "Just the Two of Us," the irony of which kept me both entertained and distracted for at least some of the four-hour wait. After that, Joshua stopped training altogether and his promotional team and his management team merged with his training team to produce what can only be described as Voltron. That was when I decided to leave my designated pen to seek a better angle from which to view Joshua cooling down. I did so mainly because I feared missing my train home and because I was now resigned to getting only color and not comment from this wasted afternoon. If I couldn't hang around to hear from Joshua, let me at least watch, I thought. Let me see something. 

In the end, however, all I saw was Joshua sitting on a weight bench sipping a bottle of Lucozade in the name of both hydration and a contractual agreement. It was hard to see much of anything, in truth, what with the fighter forever surrounded by a small group of men all kitted out in Under Armour uniform. These men would, as one, laugh whenever Joshua opened his mouth and only the sudden presence of an intruder across the room appeared to stop the laughter and remind them of their duty. Now, rather than amused, they were sizing me up and talking behind their hands. Now they were serious. Now it was the job of one of them to shuffle toward me in the manner of a teacher approaching an unfamiliar man in a trench coat outside a school and ask: "Where are you from?"

Flustered, I offered not one answer but two: the name of the publication I was there representing and the number of my designated pen. "Sorry," I then said, accepting I was in the wrong place. "Must have got lost."

Anthony Joshua was the WBA, IBF and WBO unified heavyweight champion by the end of 2018.Nick Potts - PA Images via Getty Images

"Look, if you knew my story you would understand the passion. I ain't no f***ing amateur boxer from five years old that was an elite prospect from my youth, bro. I was going to jail, I got bailed, and I started training my arse off. Because if I got sentenced, I wanted to be able to fight. I bust my case. My cousin Benga, where's he at? G-14 raise your hand! It's because of the f***ing passion we put into this s***. Guys, I'm telling you, for this guy to beat me tonight, maybe I could have done better, but it shows the levels of hard work he must have put in. So, please, give him a round of applause as our heavyweight champion of the world."

(Applause.)

"I'm not a 12-round fighter. Look at me. I'm the new breed of heavyweight. All them heavyweights, Mike Tyson, Sonny Liston, Jack Dempsey — 'Oh, he doesn't throw combinations like Rocky Marciano …' Yeah, because I ain't f***ing 14 stone, that's why. I'm 18 stone. I'm heavy. It's hard work. This guy here is a phenomenal talent. We're going to cheer for him three times. How many belts you got now, bro? Five? Hip hip! Hip hip! Hip hip! Hip hip! Hip hip!"

For those unfamiliar, that was Anthony Joshua's immediate reaction — delivered in the ring, transcribed verbatim — to losing his rematch against Oleksandr Usyk in Saudi Arabia in 2022. Some, at the time, described it as the erratic behavior of a fighter lost, or confused, or simply keen to talk away the pain of a second straight defeat — to the same man, no less. Others, meanwhile, described it as the incoherent ramblings of someone not only outclassed by a better boxer but concussed and therefore not thinking straight. They said it was proof, if needed, that a fighter should always be granted a moment's grace in the aftermath of a fight and should be nowhere near a microphone or, worse, given control of one with emotions running high. Who, after all, was going to have the guts to now stop Joshua in full flow? Moreover, whose responsibility was it to do so? 

Ultimately, because there was no plan for it, nobody did stop him. They instead let the wounded warrior prattle on for a total of three minutes until he stopped of his own volition after confessing his lack of knowledge about the conflicts in Ukraine, Usyk's homeland. By then Joshua had said enough; too much. He had also discovered what it means to feel lonely and lost among a crowd of people. 

We, the people, just gawped. 

August 20, 2022: Anthony Joshua at a press conference after his second loss to Oleksandr Usyk.Francois Nel via Getty Images

Last December, Joshua experienced a different kind of loss. This loss had nothing to do with a fight, or with belts, or even his career as a heavyweight boxer. It was instead a total loss: the loss of life. 

The lives lost were those of Latif Ayodele and Sina Ghami, two of Joshua's close friends. Both had accompanied the boxer on a holiday to Nigeria, days after he had beaten Jake Paul in one of his most lucrative fights, and yet of the three only Joshua would return home. Tragically, Ayodele and Ghami were killed in the same car accident Joshua and a driver managed to miraculously survive on Dec. 29. 

When freed from the wreckage that afternoon, the first thing Joshua would have seen were the many locals who surrounded the Lexus from which he had been pulled. Yet the hands of these locals, though all outstretched, were in this instance not helping. In actual fact, each of the hands reaching out held phones used to capture images and record footage the rest of the world would shortly see online: the shellshocked face of Joshua emerging from the car, the blood on the ground, the two dead bodies. In other words, Joshua was again being watched in a moment of crisis; surrounded yet utterly alone. 

Back home, things were no better. How could they be? No matter how many people tried to console and comfort him, it was only natural that Joshua returned from Nigeria different from how he had arrived. Now, for those in his life, it was hard to know what to do for the best: surround him or leave him be. 

Shattered glass at the accident site of Anthony Joshua's crash on Dec. 29, 2025 in Sagamu, Nigeria.Temiloluwa Johnson via Getty Images

Certainly, in the context of his fighting career, the latter option seemed the sensible one. After all, it smacked of callousness to expect Joshua to now announce his next fight, or even fight at all, in light of everything he had recently endured. Surely the world and Tyson Fury could wait. Surely the world and Tyson Fury had the decency to accept that some things are more important than British boxing's biggest fight. 

"I want you, AJ, Anthony Joshua!" Fury yelled in the aftermath of an April win against Arslanbek Makhmudov, leaning over the top rope to deliver the message to Joshua directly. "Let's give the fight fans what they want: The Battle of Britain. And here's my challenge: I challenge you, Anthony Joshua, to fight me, the Gypsy King, next. Do you accept my challenge? Come on, you big s***house. Are you going to fight or not?"

Still in a state of shock, Joshua, at first, just sat there and listened. There were phones and cameras all around him — meaning people all around him — but for as long as Fury ridiculed and shamed him into a premature return to the ring, Joshua, not for the first time, looked completely alone. 

"Tyson, you're a clout-chaser," he finally said in response. "You know I'll stand across that ring from you in due time. You're not going to tell me what to do. I've been chasing you for the last 10 years. When you're ready, you come and see me and tell me your terms and conditions, and I'll have you in the ring when I'm ready. You work for me. I'm the landlord. Remember that."

While Fury has every reason to debate the employment hierarchy, those at Matchroom Boxing have always been very clear about their role in Joshua's pro career. With him from day one, they have experienced all manner of ups and downs alongside the 36-year-old and have reiterated at every turn that they are in service to him, the fighter, and will do as they are told.  

April 11, 2026: Tyson Fury exchanges words with Anthony Joshua after his fight at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium in London.Mark Robinson via Getty Images

This dynamic, as refreshing as it is rare, becomes only more pivotal now, with Joshua on the cusp of returning to the ring. If nothing else, the unique bond between them — fighter and promoter — makes it easier to overlook the fact we are just seven months on from a traumatic incident in Joshua's life, as well as believe that any decision made regarding his return would have been led by Joshua and no one else. 

"We have a relationship that's not about money," explained Frank Smith, Matchroom Boxing CEO. "It's never been us pushing him into something. We will always do the best job for him based on his desires. Ultimately, he's in charge. That's the relationship we've always had with him. He's the boss. That's the structure of our deal with him and that's why he has been with us for 13 years. 

"If he wanted to stop fighting tomorrow, there would be no attempt from us to change his mind. It would have been the same a year ago or two years ago. It's all about what's best for him. 

"Back in January we weren't focusing on him fighting again. We couldn't. Because of the personal relationship, we just focused on making sure he was OK. Asking 'Will he fight again?' was the wrong question to ask. 

"But, at the same time, boxing is his life. Boxing is his sole focus and is what he has done day in, day out for the last 16 years. 'Escape' is maybe the wrong word, but if you have routine and you have focus, it's most vital in those sorts of times. Boxing gives him that. 

"I always thought he would box again for that reason. But we never asked him whether he would."

Despite him being the boss, or landlord, there is a suggestion that Joshua has now unburdened himself of some of the responsibilities he once juggled alongside his fighting career. Seemingly, even shoulders as broad as Anthony Joshua's can feel the weight of too much pressure, not that there's any shame in that. On the contrary, to know and accept one's limitations reveals a certain intelligence, humility and maturity. It also gives Joshua, 29-4 (26 KOs), the best chance of navigating this emotionally-heavy final chapter of his career.

"I was trying to do too much outside of boxing," he said in a recent piece for DAZN. "I was trying to become a respected businessman while being a world-level athlete. Now Barry Hearn [President of Matchroom Sport] has given me advice and we've shut down all the businesses to focus on the ones performing. The number one performing business that I'm in is boxing. That's where I want to put all my energy and focus back into and become a heavyweight champion once again."

June 1, 2026: Anthony Joshua addresses a press conference ahead of his comeback fight against Kristian Prenga.Warren Little via Getty Images

"I commend him for what he wanted to do with it, but ultimately you have to immerse yourself in whatever you do for things to be a success," said Smith. "For him, there's so much pressure, in his position especially, and the sport is one of the toughest sports out there. To have so many distractions can be difficult. Although you may have people running things, it still comes down to you. I think to be the best in your field, whatever it is, you have to focus on it 24/7, and I think those distractions were not beneficial, as he has said, to his sporting career. 

"But even so, he has done some amazing things — in terms of his property portfolio and what he has built. He has done many things most athletes don't or wouldn't be able to do. He just knows, from a boxing perspective, this is now the last roll of the dice and so he's going to focus on that completely."

Joshua's opponent on Saturday will be Kristian Prenga, a 35-year-old Albanian of whom not a great deal is known, and whose record of 20-1 (20 KOs) says more about his level of opposition than his level of threat. In any case, it hardly matters who fights Anthony Joshua this weekend in Saudi Arabia. All that really matters is that he is back where he belongs — back, that is, where he feels at home, comfortable, and almost safe.

There, in the ring, he will again be alone with his fears, but he can remove those fears and decide his fate with his fists. That, for a man who was seven months ago reminded of how little control any of us have in life, is an opportunity too good to refuse. It offers Joshua the chance, if just for one night, to feel not quite so powerless. 

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