The prospect of defeat simultaneously excites and frightens Anthony Joshua, as it does most boxers. But it is different for heavyweights, where uncertainty is built into every punch, and the unbeaten four-belt world champion knows that at Wembley Stadium on Saturday night Alexander Povetkin will provide the biggest threat to his dominance since Wladimir Klitschko knocked him down in the same ring 18 months ago.
The Ukrainian had not long turned 42, at the end of a decade of hegemony shared intermittently with his older brother, Vitali. Joshua’s Russian challenger is 39 and the champion, a mere 28, acknowledges he is “the second hardest” opponent of his career after Klitschko, the only fighter to beat Povetkin. There is much at stake. Joshua, whose last four fights have been in front of 300,000 fans in the nation’s two biggest football stadiums – numbers that were unimaginable for even the sport’s most decorated champions of the past – is the No 1 individual box-office draw in the history of British sport. Nobody comes close.
And he brings with him not only the belts sanctioned by the IBF, WBA, WBO and IBO but the expectations of millions that the gilded tale of the ever-smiling Olympic champion and reformed street kid from Watford will not end just yet. Ramping up his heartbeat will be the jangling nerves he needs to deliver on those hopes.
Joshua loves a thrill, from paragliding in Brazil, to scaling seaside cliffs with Bear Grylls, to the loud roar of motorbikes. “I remember growing up around the estate,” he says, “a couple of boys had, like, little quad bikes, 50cc. It was a buzz. I like bungee jumping, going around race tracks in cars, high-speed stuff. There was the hang glider in Rio. That was baaad!
“The buzz from boxing is so different. You think about the fear of losing more. When I’m on the bike I don’t think about the fear of falling off, it’s just speed, speed, speed. In boxing it’s not, like, go, go, go. It’s, like, I don’t want to make a mistake. I don’t want to fall off. It’s weird.
“That fear of losing is always there. Sugar Ray Robinson, the best fighter of all time, lost. Sugar Ray Leonard. Marvin Hagler. Thomas Hearns. Roberto Durán, Muhammad Ali, Mike Tyson, Evander Holyfield, Riddick Bowe. What?
“People say, ‘He ain’t nothing like Riddick Bowe’. So who am I to go undefeated? But I am content with it because I know those nights of negativity don’t define me. I have lost before as an amateur and that didn’t deter me from getting where I am today.”
He adds: “The reality is, why is the heavyweight division interesting? Because one punch can change the course of a fight. You are in there for 12 rounds. At first I thought, ‘Is Povetkin a good fight?’ Because now I am caught up in the commercial hype. But scrap all that. I’m up against one of the best fighters in the world. We’re not talking about Great Britain, this is the world. He’s a top-three fighter in the world. So I have got to be on my A game.”
And convention dictates that Joshua must wear his mask of invincibility going into battle. “I am the best in the division,” he says. “There is no doubt about it. It’s been proven. There hasn’t been a time in boxing since I’ve been an amateur that I haven’t been on top. At whatever level I was at I have always been able to get to the top.”
While the golden rule of the business is never to look beyond the next fight, the landscape is opening up for Joshua on ever widening fronts. The temptation is to reach out across the waters, to spread the word, gloss the brand, bank the cash. Best estimates suggest Deontay Wilder, the WBC champion, will re-enter negotiations for a unification fight next year if he beats Tyson Fury, an intriguing contest yet to be confirmed. Dillian Whyte wants a rematch. Fury wants his showdown. And the odds are any or all of these fights will be at Wembley.
There was speculation this week that Joshua, who went to school in Nigeria, might fight Wilder in a nostalgic reprise of the Ali-Foreman Rumble In The Jungle. This is a notion that needs leavening by history and contemporary reality.
Don King engineered that 1974 craziness in Zaire in a one-off gamble with the ruthless dictator, Mobutu Sese Seko, with the assistance of the late John Daly, who came from a south London boxing family and went on to fame and fortune as a Hollywood financier and film producer. Without the magic of Ali, however, it would not have happened.
Daly, whose screen triumphs included The Terminator, was well known to Eddie Hearn’s father, Barry, having failed to deliver the infamous 1994 High Noon In Hong Kong promotion for him when no purses were forthcoming for fights involving Frank Bruno, Ray Mercer, Herbie Hide, Tommy Morrison, Steve Collins and Billy Schwer. None got paid. Daly blamed his partner, Bob Arum. Plus ça change – but the elder Hearn knows better than most the perils of overreaching in exotic surroundings away from venues that guarantee large revenues. And, if further evidence were needed that Rumble II is a fantasy project, Povetkin provided it when asked if he would like to entice Joshua to Moscow for a rematch in the event of winning on Saturday night.
“I would be thrilled to fight here again,” he said, suppressing a smile. Of course he would. He is earning £6m, more than he has seen for any of his 35 fights. That revenue is possible because Wembley will resound to the roar of 80,000 fans, and the pay-per-view on Sky will probably top one million hits. Those numbers are not remotely available from the governments of Nigeria and Ghana, who are Joshua’s latest suitors. Eddie would do well to resist the call of the jungle.
Indeed, it is likely that Joshua, who has an iron grip on his finances and the direction of his career, will decide to spend much of the rest of his career fighting at Wembley Stadium. A pay-per-view bonanza in Las Vegas is the only alternative that would drag him away from his home city.
Matchroom, incidentally, has booked Wembley Stadium for 13 April 2019 but it will be empty unless the fear of losing gets Joshua past Povetkin. He should do so inside 10 rounds.
