Anthony Joshua is quickly looking to make amends after his loss to Oleksandr Usyk last month – and has drafted in a big name to help with his preparations for next year’s rumoured rematch.
AJ was beaten by Usyk in September at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium, losing the WBA, IBF, WBO, and IBO heavyweight titles to the Ukrainian.
After the defeat, the Briton and his current trainer Rob McCracken were criticised regarding their approach to the fight.
And Joshua’s response to this has been to call upon American trainer Ronnie Shields, who is most commonly known for coaching boxing legend Mike Tyson.
The Watford brawler has also been out in the United States as he looks to seek revenge over Usyk, and Shields is happy to continue working with Joshua as he gears up for the rematch.
“It was them who reached out to me,” he told ThaBoxingVoice.
“They reached out to me and they asked me would I be interested in taking a look at AJ and he would like to come down to Texas and see if things could work out between him and I.
“I said, ‘yeah, no problem, I would love to take a look at him, love to see if we can mesh together’.
“You could say it was kind of like an audition but for me, every time I talk boxing, boxing is boxing, I don’t care who I’m talking boxing with.
"There’s no such thing for me as getting nerves or anything like that because I do this every day, this is not something that’s new to me.
“Names don’t mean anything to me, if I can help somebody I’ll help somebody, I just tell them what I think and how I feel. I didn’t get nervous or anything like that because I’ve been here too many times, I’ve done it too many times.
“For a heavyweight, it would be great to get him to reclaim his world titles that he lost to Usyk and I think I’ve got the capabilities to help him to do that.
When asked if he believed Joshua could beat Tyson Fury, Shields said: “Oh absolutely.
“He’s a lot bigger than I thought he was, he’s not fat, he’s trained up pretty good, he has the stature, anybody who can punch and knows how to put punches together has a chance against a guy like Tyson Fury.
“But him and I never talked about Tyson Fury, his whole thing was Usyk, he knows in order to get to Tyson Fury he’s got to get by Usyk first and that’s number one priority.”