Noise is rife about Anthony Joshua losing to the boxing under dog from Mexico, Andy Ruiz Jr. Some say the bout was fixed, others say Joshua underestimated his opponent. Some people even joked that he lost tithe big belly power.
In all of the controversies and brouhaha...how many of you actually know Josh's story culminating to now?
Here is a compilation of never-told-before-facts of Anthony Joshua...
* Anthony Oluwafemi Olaseni Joshua , OBE (born 15 October 1989 in Watford, Hertfordshire, Britain) is a British professional boxer.
* He is a former unified world heavyweight champion, who held three of the four major championships in boxing: the IBF title from 2016 to 2019, the WBA (Super) title from 2017 to 2019, and the WBO title from 2018 to 2019.
* He had also held the IBO title from 2017 to 2019, and at regional level he held the British and Commonwealth heavyweight titles from 2014 to 2016.
* Joshua is nicknamed AJ, The Landlord or The Rent Collector
* Joshua is the second British boxer, after James DeGale, to win both a gold medal at the Olympics and a world title by a major professional sanctioning body, as well as being the first British heavyweight to do so.
* He is the son of Yeta (mother), a Nigerian, and Robert Joshua, (father) who is of Nigerian and Irish ancestry.
* Joshua got a tattoo of the continent inked on his upper-right arm, with Nigeria clearly highlighted.
* Joshua's cousin, Ben Ileyemi, is also a professional boxer. The pair made their professional debuts together in 2013.
* Before being absorbed by boxing, he worked as a bricklayer. His cousin, Ben Lleyemi, took him to the Finchley Amateur Boxing Club in Barnet. This proved to be a turning point as he soon began training as a boxer here.
* Joshua spent some of his early years in Nigeria as a boarding school student at Mayflower School in Ikenne.
* While at the boarding school, he was up at 5:30 in the morning to fetch water, warm it up with iron rod, washed and ironed his cloths.
* Joshua makes no secret of his Nigerian heritage and also wanted to represent it at the 2008 Olympic Games. He missed out after reaching days after the trials.
* Following his parents' divorce when he was 12, he returned to the UK halfway through Year Seven to join
Kings Langley Secondary School.
* He excelled at football and athletics and broke his school's Year Nine 100 m record with a time of 11.6 seconds.
* Joshua began boxing in 2007 at the age of 18.
* Anthony Joshua won the Haringey Boxing Cup for two straight years in 2009 and 2010. His twenties were a roaring success as he won all 18 fights at the Amateur level.
* Joshua won the senior ABA Championships in 2010, in only his 18th bout, and later turned down £50,000 to turn professional because he preferred winning medals to money.
* Joshua became British amateur champion at the GB Amateur Boxing Championships after defeating Amin Isa. In June 2011 at the 2011 European Amateur Boxing Championships he beat Eric Berechlin and Cathal McMonagle but was stopped by aggressive Romanian southpaw Mihai Nistor after receiving several standing counts.
* In October 2011 he was named Amateur Boxer of the Year by the Boxing Writers Club of Great Britain.
* He had an amateur record of 40-3.
* During the 2011 World Amateur Boxing Championships in Baku, Azerbaijan , Joshua marked his sudden arrival on the world scene when he beat Italian reigning World & Olympic champion Roberto Cammarelle , and went on to stop Erik Pfeifer of Germany in the semis before losing by a single point to local boxer, Magomedrasul Majidov winning a silver medal.
* Joshua made his professional debut on 5 October 2013 at the O2 Arena in London in the Main-Event of a card featuring Scott Quigg 's successful WBA super-bantamweight title defence against Yoandris Salinas, beating Italian Emanuelue Leo by a TKO in the first round.
* He inflicted one of the quickest technical knocked out when he defeated the undefeated IBO Intercontinental champion, Gary Cornish, in just 90 seconds on September 12, 2015, at the O2 Arena. He was crowned the ‘British and Commonwealth Heavyweight Champion.'
* He was appointed Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) in the 2013.
* On April 09, 2016, he defeated Charles Martin, to become ‘IBF Heavyweight’ champion and in the process became the first Briton to win both the super-heavyweight Olympic gold and a version of world title.
* His bout with Wladimir Klitschko, on April 29, 2017, at Wembley Stadium, London, registered a post war record of 90,000 attendances. The bout lasted full eleven rounds before Joshua knocked him down for the IBF and IBO Heavyweight title.
* He retained his titles when he took on Carlos Takam, on October 28, 2017, at Principality Stadium, Cardiff, Wales. He was stretched for the second time in his career, before referee stopped the fight in tenth round to record his 20th win.
* Joshua was forced to go the distance for the first time against Joseph Parker, on March 31, 2018. He was paid career high fee of £18 million.
* He recorded his 22nd win of his career in front of 80,000 in attendance at the Wembley Stadium, London, on September 22, 2018. He stopped Alexander Povetkin, in the seventh round to be crowned Super Champion.
* Joshua has expressed an interest in Chess as well as reading as a way to reinforce his boxing and tactical abilities.
* Joshua has a son, Joseph Bayley Temiloluwa Prince Joshua, out of his relationship with Nicole Osborne, a pole dancing teacher.
* He bought a £ 500,000 flat in Finchley, north London for his two years old son and ex-girlfriend.
* Around the age of 16 he allegedly had few brushes with law. During a football match he grabbed an opponent by the neck threw him down then had a street fights which ended up on remand in Reading Prison.
* In March 2011, he was reportedly pulled over by the police for speeding in Colindale, North London and was found with eight ounces of herbal cannabis hidden in a sports bag. He was charged and sentenced to a 12-month community order and 100 hours unpaid work.
* At one time, a boxer Amir Khan accused Joshua of being involved with his ex-wife, Farval Makhdoom. Joshua denied the rumor and claimed that he had not even met Farval.
* Anyway, Joshua got gold medal with only five years boxing experience.
* The boxer lost his unified heavyweight titles in one of heavyweight boxing's biggest shocks to Andy Ruiz Jr. and has demanded a rematch vowing to reclaim his titles.
* According to Celebrity Net Worth, Joshua's fortune is roughly $60 million in 2019.
Read more about his exploits here :
and here...
Win or lose, fixed or underestimated, Anthony Joshua is still our hero!!
You've got the Nigerian blood. We never back down. You'll recover everything and even more. We love you Josh!!
.jpeg)
Here you can get a reliable resource for watching joshua vs ruiz on Android fight on 7th December.
ReplyDelete