Kubrat Pulev expects Oleksandr Usyk to knock out Anthony Joshua in their highly-anticipated rematch.
The Bulgarian star doesn't rate the British superstar very highly at all.
That's despite being knocked out by him at the O2 Arena in London back in 2020.
But he insists that was because he didn't prepare properly for their fight.
Pulev told iFL TV: “When they make a rematch, I think Usyk is going to knock him out because Joshua is nothing special.
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"I lost against him, but I wasn’t good prepared.
"It’s my mistake, of course. It’s my fault, but that was the situation. Now I have a lot of power and energy. Health is most important."
Joshua, 32, has assembled a crack team after having a huge sort out to help him get over what his new trainer Robert Garcia has described as a 'mental problem' ahead of his rematch with Usyk.
AJ suffered his second career defeat in September last year when he was outpointed by Usyk at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium.
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But Garcia is convinced they can bring the best out of him as he attempts to regain his belts.
Garcia told his YouTube channel: “A lot of fighters, they come off a loss – like probably after the Andy Ruiz Jr fight – they come off a loss thinking that was never gonna happen.
“So it affected him, it affected him mentally.
“He probably thought, ‘Maybe that’s the end of my career, maybe that’s it,’ so he had a lot of things going on in his mind.
“I think that’s one of the most important things that affected Anthony and that’s what I’m here to change – me and Angel and other help that he’s got.
“He’s created a team of not only me and Angel teaming up, preparing the game plan and training him with the right strategy or the right sparring partners to go out and perform.
Kubrat Pulev has backed Oleksandr Usyk to knock out Anthony Joshua
“He hired other people that are also very smart.
“Not boxing trainers, just different people that could help with the way he’s thinking.
“Somebody that’s with him, thinking positive with him. Everybody around him is positive.
“Everybody around him is pushing him to his limits, to what he was doing before he lost his first fight.
“He needs to know and believe that he’s still as good, or he’s gonna be even better than he was before he became champion for the first time, when he went out there and was knocking everybody out.”
Garcia, 47, has worked with many current and former world champions throughout his career including his brother Mikey Garcia, 34, Filipino icon Nonito Donaire, 39, and Argentine legend Marcos Maidana, 38.
He continued: “A lot of times when a fighter is so good, so accomplished with a gold medal, two-time heavyweight champion, sometimes then they might get a little too comfortable.
“They might think, ‘I already lost a fight, so maybe I’m not as good?’
“It gets to the head. It’s something that we have to change.
“Because he already did it. He already won the gold medal against the best fighters in the world.
“And then as a pro he also did beat the best to become heavyweight champion of the world.
“We didn’t see that before he lost. After he lost is when we’ve seen that there’s more of a mental problem so we’re working on that.
“We have to push him in training, in sparring.
“The work is gonna be done, he just has to go out there and perform.”
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