T he days after a defeat can be a lonely time for a fighter. Friends and family slip back into their everyday routines and the house and calendar are suddenly empty. After spending months talking about the fight and what they are going to do, the fighter is left alone with their thoughts, dealing with the consequences of what actually happened. It is an experience that boxers at every level go through at some point in their career but, for somebody as used to being at the center of attention as Anthony Joshua is, the contrast must be particularly stark. Hours after being knocked out by Daniel Dubois in the fifth round of their IBF heavyweight title fight, and as the sporting world hurried to write his obituary, Joshua sat down quietly and began trying to make sense of what had happened at Wembley Stadium. The two-time unified heavyweight champion came to one immediate conclusion. “That I’m probably a lot stronger mentally than I was before,” Joshua said, “Like, for example, you go through your first breakup. It hurts you. Then you get another relationship and you approach it a bit differently and, all of a sudden now, you become immune to the pain of breakups in a relationship.
I just felt like, ‘You know what? It’s in the past, and the only thing I can predict is the future. I can’t change the past, but I can change my future. So, don’t worry about that.’ “I tried my best, I got beat up, and we’ll go again, basically. Don’t overthink the situation.” In the past, those quiet moments of reflection have led Joshua to some definite decisions. Once the dust had settled on his stunning loss to Andy Ruiz in 2019, Joshua knew that he had to get the Mexican back into the ring as quickly as possible, which he did, scoring a one-sided unanimous decision over the portly underdog six months later. After losing to Oleksandr Usyk in September 2021, Joshua ended his successful partnership with Rob McCracken and hired Robert Garcia for the rematch. A second defeat to the brilliant Ukrainian led to a root-and-branch rethink of his entire approach, and he took himself to Dallas to evolve his style with Derrick James. This time, there are more threads to pull together. Getting the chance to even the score with Dubois would be a matter of professional and personal pride for the 35-year-old Joshua, but another loss to the reborn Londoner would deal a terminal blow to his career. The towering figure of Tyson Fury also looms large.
On December 21, Usyk and Fury will renew hostilities in Saudi Arabia and
“So, when I first lost, it was different. Then I lost again; it was different. Now
Joshua insists that his most devastating setback has only made him stronger.
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