As his wait for a fight wound down, the world heavyweight champion Anthony Joshua looked and sounded like a man guarding against complacency rather than the unknown threat ahead of him at the Principality Stadium on Saturday night, the low-key Frenchman Carlos Takam.
Hitting the scales in Cardiff on Friday at a heavier than expected 18st 2lb, heftily more than Takam’s 16st 11lb of honed muscle, Joshua said his 36-year-old challenger – pitched in late to replace the mandated but injured Kubrat Pulev – deserved his full respect. “I’m confident but not too cocky” he told an adoring crowd, his voice cracking slightly, which suggested he might be riding out a cold.
Carl Froch, who was one of his sport’s most diligent trainers and rarely strayed more than a few pounds from his fighting weight of 12st, understands the temptation to slacken off that some champions experience. The former world super-middleweight champion does not think Joshua is one of those offenders (although he admits to having been guilty of the minor crime a couple of times in his own career), and expects him to devote his full attention to the job in the fourth defence of his IBF title.
“Nerves? Always,” Joshua said. “But I’ve got to keep a cool head on my shoulders. He’s got a dangerous mindset, with nothing to lose. I’ve got to break him down, round by round. I’m still hungry.”
There is much at stake for the unbeaten Briton: the IBF title for a start, as well as his status as WBA belt holder and ownership of the lesser IBO championship – not to mention the destination in which Joshua is heading from here: into the not-so-loving arms of Deontay Wilder.
That is the danger for Joshua: ignoring the secondary dividend of victory. If, as Froch alluded to, he turns off for even a second during the fight, he risks paying for it as Takam will not waste an opportunity he can hardly have imagined would come his way. The shoulder injury to Pulev has handed the stocky 6ft 1½in boxer the biggest payday of his career and at least a slim hope of upsetting the Joshua roadshow.
As for Wilder, he remains an impatient bystander, preparing for his own defence of the WBC version of the heavyweight title, against Bermane Stiverne, in New York next month. Asked this week if he would be watching Joshua’s fight, he said: “Of course I’m going to look at it. I definitely look at the guys at the top of the division. Anybody say they don’t watch, then they’re lying. The ultimate goal is to get Joshua. We’re not just going to be sitting up here and doing this and doing that. I don’t see what’s the difference between me and any other guy.”
The difference is he is also unbeaten, with a near-perfect knockout record, Stiverne the only opponent to go the distance with him. But the American is also a pawn in a bigger game, which he resents. He demands title-holder respect yet feels Joshua’s promoter, Eddie Hearn, is giving him none of that by demanding he fight the Londoner Dillian Whyte on 3 February before getting a shot at unifying the titles with the Watford man.
Wilder said: “Joshua says he needs more time; he ain’t ready. He wants to put himself in a better position. But you already fought a guy that got way more experience than I. I don’t understand this sport when it comes to me. It feels like I’m better off not being in this sport than being in it.
“All this stuff has just been a buildup for me. I can handle it well, though. I can’t wait. All this needs to be released. Unfortunately for Stiverne, come 4 November it will be released. I want to prove to the world that I am the best. That’s all I want to do. I don’t care about who’s the A side, who’s the B side, where the fight’s going to be. I don’t care about that stuff, just me in the ring.”
Except he cares very much about who is the A side. Wilder and his connections have already turned down more than $3m (£2.3m) to fight Whyte, and Hearn has said he will increase that offer – but there has been no indication he will reach for the carrot, even though he regards Whyte as an easy opponent. That is a dangerous assessment, as Whyte hopes to prove on the undercard on Saturday night when he fights Robert Helenius. He cannot afford to mess that up because there is still a chance that Wilder will be tempted to put his belt on the line against him – if he beats Stiverne, as he should.
Wilder’s promoter, Lou DiBella, chipped in: “If Eddie Hearn wants Anthony Joshua to fight in 2018, he knows who to call. By the way, maybe if he really wanted that fight his promoter would be more respectful to Deontay instead of continuing to try to bad mouth him and belittle him. If he really wanted to fight he’d stop talking about some ordinary guy named Dillian Whyte and stop calling out Deontay with an ordinary guy and start talking in real terms about making a unified heavyweight championship fight.”
But, as Joshua, Takam, Wilder, Stiverne, Hearn, DiBella and the fat man in the pub know, there are no certainties in the heavyweight division, nor in any boxing match. The attraction is measured by the level of uncertainty contained in the matchup. There is not a lot of it for Joshua against Takam, but just enough to make it interesting. The champion should conclude the argument after a few rough moments, probably just past the halfway stage.
