There is a feeling that, in Anthony Joshua, British boxing has found its modern crossover star.
Joshua seems able to combine his twin roles of champion and spokesperson with ease. He is a fighter who can dispatch all challengers with the same air of calm that he fields rehearsed questions in a talkshow interview; dangerous and terrifying, yet simultaneously friendly and likeable.
At his most recent fight, a surprisingly drawn out affair against late stand-in Carlos Takam, chants of “Oh Anthony Joshua” were sung to the tune of the White Stripes hit “Seven Nation Army”. In Britain, this is the surest sign of having attained mainstream success, save perhaps for appearing on the Pyramid Stage at Glastonbury.
The Takam fight – a payday that became rather too nervy as the rounds progressed – came six months after Joshua’s true arrival as a superstar. His win over heavyweight legend Wladimir Klitschko at Wembley in May 2017 earned him more than just a few heavyweight belts – it wrote his name into the national psyche.
The fight itself lived up to the occasion, developing into an absorbing encounter between one of the sport’s great champions and his anointed successor – “the young lion versus the old lion”, as Joshua later put it. This was a night on which the title of heavyweight champion truly was earned.
His eventual recovery from a sixth-round knockdown to dispatch Klitschko in the 11th was so perfect as to feel scripted. What’s more, by beating a fighter as famous as the Ukrainian in such Hollywood fashion, Joshua took on a new kind of fame.
He is no longer merely known by boxing fans, nor just general followers of sport. Joshua has now graduated to the level where people who have never seen a title fight feel comfortable dropping his name into conversation.
These totemic figures exist across sport; when one British competitor rises above the rest, their name becomes a part of our national language. Over the past decade tennis has meant Andy Murray, while Formula 1 has meant Lewis Hamilton. Now, boxing means Anthony Joshua.
Joshua took up boxing late, at age of 18, having previously shown promise in football and track events. The sport was an outlet for a smart but restless character. As a teenager he had been on remand in Reading prison, awaiting a possible jail sentence for what he later called “fighting and other crazy stuff”. He was spared time behind bars, but made to wear an electronic tag instead.
In retrospect it helped to make him, the enforced curfews adding a court-ordered discipline to his obvious physical prowess and latent intelligence.
He excelled at boxing, yet came close to throwing it away again in 2010. With his amateur career on a rapid upward trajectory, he was arrested after cannabis was found his car and charged with intent to supply the drug.
After pleading guilty he was sentenced to a 12-month community order and 100 hours of unpaid work; perhaps more significantly, he was suspended by the British boxing squad. His career could quite easily have ended there.
But he returned to the fold with renewed commitment and won silver at the 2011 World Amateur Boxing Championships, paving the way for his Olympic glory the following year. There has quite literally been no stopping him since.
THE KNOCKDOWNS
This weekend the WBA and IBF champion meets WBO title-holder Joseph Parker at Cardiff’s Principality Stadium, where both men will put undefeated records on the line in what has been called the ‘road to unification’. Deontay Wilder holds the WBC belt, with a fight to unite all four inevitable later in the year. Joshua’s rise to be part of such conversations has been meteoric. The Klitschko fight was only his 19th as a professional. He is yet to go the distance and, before fighting the Ukrainian, had only been taken beyond the third round twice in 18 bouts. He first announced himself by winning Olympic gold at the 2012 Games in London, his reputation receiving the added shimmer enjoyed by all British stars of that celebrated summer.
Joshua took up boxing late, at age of 18, having previously shown promise in football and track events. The sport was an outlet for a smart but restless character. As a teenager he had been on remand in Reading prison, awaiting a possible jail sentence for what he later called “fighting and other crazy stuff”. He was spared time behind bars, but made to wear an electronic tag instead.
In retrospect it helped to make him, the enforced curfews adding a court-ordered discipline to his obvious physical prowess and latent intelligence.
He excelled at boxing, yet came close to throwing it away again in 2010. With his amateur career on a rapid upward trajectory, he was arrested after cannabis was found his car and charged with intent to supply the drug.
After pleading guilty he was sentenced to a 12-month community order and 100 hours of unpaid work; perhaps more significantly, he was suspended by the British boxing squad. His career could quite easily have ended there.
But he returned to the fold with renewed commitment and won silver at the 2011 World Amateur Boxing Championships, paving the way for his Olympic glory the following year. There has quite literally been no stopping him since.