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Anthony Joshua's Motivation For Learning to Box
Anthony Joshua's Grim Motivation For Learning to Box - and Why He Refuses to be Flash
Anthony Joshua opened up on run-ins with the law before his success at the Olympics and how the experiences gave him the discipline required to succeed in the sport
Daily Mirror UK, 30 JUL 2020
Anthony Joshua won Olympic gold at the age of 22 with just five years of boxing experience under his belt.
The career that followed has lived up to the promise of the rapid rise that took Joshua from a raw, exciting talent at London 2012 to the top of the sport as a two-time unified heavyweight champion eight years later.
Before his Olympic dream turned reality, his life had reached a crossroads after two separate incidents with the police - including one when he was wearing his Team GB tracksuit - that almost derailed his boxing career before it began.
In 2009, Joshua was put on remand in Reading Prison for two weeks for "fighting and other crazy stuff" and he says he began boxing and weightlifting in preparation for a potential prison sentence.
Joshua began learning to box when he was released on bail
"I think I was looking at 15 years, I thought 'I'll do that easy'," he told Ebro Darden on Apple Music's Songs for Life podcast.
"So I would have been out like two years ago. I was like 'cool, no problem. If it's guilty, it's guilty'. It's just a mindset, my mindset was in a different place. It was a don’t do the crime if you can’t do the time type of mindset. "
Opening up on his experience during his time at the prison, he said: "I remember these little kids, not kids but people who were my age, who were hype. You know that one kid at the back just shouting and we're just trying to chill, this is our time out of the cell. I look back and he's like 'what are you looking at?’ and I say 'Who are you talking to?'
"When I got bail that's when I started learning how to box and lift weights because I thought if I'm going to do a long sentence and I've got these little idiot kids in the jail, I'm going to come in there and I'm going to back myself.
Joshua won Olympic gold at London 2012 (Image: Getty Images Sport Classic)
"I started pumping weights, me and my cousin. He used to come over to mine and we bought one of these all-in-one weight machines so we just put it in the living room and we'd just be bench pressing and listening to like Papoose, 50 Cent Get Rich or Die Tryin'.
"I didn't have a clue, I thought it was like bench press and press ups, then he showed me shoulder press, delts, and I say yeah, now I’m about my business.
"Signed up to one of these hard man gyms, because I was on tag - obviously I’m out on bail conditions so I've got the tag on my leg - so I have to be home at 8 O'clock every day. I was in a strict routine at a time when I was only 17/18, and I think that's what helped me with my boxing that when I came off of tag I was already in a position where I was ready to take off with boxing.
"I just had to kind of, whatever work the devil had for me, I had to block out and stay focused on the righteous path. And that’s still about today but I know how to manage it."
He's now a two-time unified heavyweight champion (Image: AFP via Getty Images)
As a result, the love he discovered for boxing led Joshua to join Finchley Amateur Boxing Club in Barnet, North London, where his success in domestic tournaments earned him a place on the GB team.
A year before the Olympics he says he was earning about £500 a month but had "seen more money than that before" so it wasn't enough of an incentive to keep him away from "opportunities that came my way at that time".
Driving through a London estate in a Mercedes wearing his GB tracksuit, Joshua says he was pulled over by three undercover police officers, who found cannabis in his car.
"I thought 'Should I run?’ Normally that’s the case, but my whip was there, my phone, I was obviously part of the Olympic team.
"So I just dealt with it like a man. Got charged, it was, you know, nine ounces, so personal use or whatever you want to call it. I done my community service, I got banned from the Olympic team though which was a tough time."
He added: "I learned how to get smarter, that was the most important thing. Secondly, change my car - too flash. And that's why I think now, especially as a boxer, I know how to keep low-key, I'm not too flash.
"I learned the art of bouncing back."
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