questioned myself. I’m like, ‘Where am I? Do I really want to do it? Am I good enough? Am I this, or whatever?’ And the answers were, ‘You know what? I feel like I’m a lot stronger mentally than I ever was before,’ because the way I’m dealing with it is one of thicker skin. “In terms of styles and approaches, it’s hard because I can’t train myself. I’ve got coaches to train me but, 100 percent, we have to work together, not against each other. If my coach is telling me to move back and I think it’s better to move forward, we can’t work against each other. We just have to find a middle ground. So I will trust myself. I don’t know what type of style I’ll use, but I just know in my heart, I just feel like it made me more thirsty for action. “I didn’t get disheartened by the situation. I was sitting there like, ‘Let’s go again.’”
‘I’m good now. Let’s rock and roll. Let’s just put it all together. The boxing, the instincts. Give it a go again, roll the dice again.’” Joshua can box. He understands the mechanics and technicalities of the sport and has spent thousands of hours drilling and repeating routines and techniques until they became second nature. If ever there was a time to fall back on that learned behavior, it was during those dangerous rounds with Dubois. But when faced with a crisis, Joshua’s natural reaction wasn’t to tuck his chin, glue his hand to his cheek and buy himself some time. He didn’t hold. The instincts he once tried to suppress took over. He stood and fought. The worst has now happened, but whoever and whenever Joshua fights next, he insists he will go into it with a stronger mindset than before. “I just know I’m stronger mentally, and I don’t have that fear. I just
person, still had my same fears, my same confidence, everything,” he said. “Physically, that’s just a small part of it. Mentally, I’ve always been the same, to be honest.” “Even with my past fights, I just said to the coaches, ‘Look, the past is the past. It doesn’t matter what anyone says. It just matters what we do from here.’ “I’ve got my war council, my board of fighters or fight people that I sit down with and talk boxing, but it wasn’t about that. I just felt that when you get to a certain level, your instinctual ability can take you so far. “I used to fight a lot on my instincts and I realized that it was getting tough, tough, tough at the top… so I wanted to learn how to improve as a fighter. How to box. Move to the right, left hooks coming. Move to the left, right hands coming. How to counterpunch and practice these things. “And then I just got that, so I was like,
ADVICE FROM A FOE After losing a unanimous decision to Oleksandr Usyk in 2021, Joshua turned in an improved performance during their rematch, but the Ukrainian once again accelerated away down the stretch and fought his way to a split decision victory. Joshua thinks Usyk didn’t make any wholesale changes to his own style ahead of the return, but instead waited to see what changes the Brit had made and then reacted accordingly. “Yeah, that’s what I felt,” Joshua said. “I felt that there was a bit more room for me to do what I was doing. But what he did, he took
off in the later rounds. Even though he was giving me room to work, he’s assessing, because obviously [he’s thinking], ‘He’s going to be more aggressive. He’s going to be more this.’ He’s now gauging and seeing what’s going on. “Once he’d now figured the puzzle out, he then took off in the last 25 percent of the fight. Rounds 9, 10, 11, 12.” Fury has stopped John McDermott, Derek Chisora and Deontay Wilder in rematches. He performed well during the undisputed title fight with Usyk in May and looked to have established an element of control until being badly hurt in the ninth. Fury won’t need to change much in order to even the score, and Joshua couldn’t offer any suggestions as to what those alterations may be. “Only he knows,” he said. “It’s hard for me to say. I don’t know. His coach, they all know. I can’t say. I’ve tried it. I’ve tried boxing, I’ve tried being aggressive. Both of them didn’t work, so I don’t know what will work for him. I suppose it’s [which] Usyk shows up.”
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