Although Anthony Joshua is just 14 months younger than Tyson Fury, the WBC heavyweight champion Fury has five additional years of professional experience as a boxer.
The 30-year-old Joshua made his pro debut in 2013 shortly after capturing Olympics gold for Great Britain. The recently turned 32-year-old Fury didn’t pan out for the Summer Games and instead turned pro in 2008.
Although they are the top two active heavyweights in the world, the WBO, WBA, IBF and IBO champion Joshua doesn’t think he should be considered to be in the same era as the more seasoned Fury.
“Being world champion, with all those knockouts, you do feel kind of unstoppable. But realistically, in boxing terms, I’m way ahead of where I should be,” Joshua told GQ Magazine. “I’m working at such a quick pace. I shouldn’t even be in a position where I’m mentioned in Tyson Fury’s era. He’s five or six years ahead of me in terms of turning professional. In fact, when he was turning pro, I was just putting on my gloves for the first time.”
Joshua (23-1, 21 KOs) has fought just seven fewer pro fights than Fury (30-0-1, 21 KOs), who stepped away from the sport for three and a half years from 2015 and 2018 while battling with obesity, substance abuse and mental health issues.
“There’s always that question in my head. Am I as good as I should be? Am I as good as people say I am? I’ve been placed on this pedestal but with minimum experience, so there’s always that element of doubt,” said Joshua.
Joshua, who eventually captured all of the belts Fury was forced to vacate in recent years, also offered a look into how he was maturing when Fury was on hiatus.
“I was just living life. Enjoying myself, having no real structure. I was going to college, but there was no real purpose,” said Joshua. “With boxing, it wasn’t even about becoming the world champion. It was about becoming a world champion of myself. I made the decision to focus on the sport. It was either sleep early, digest good food, listen to the right things, focus on my boxing education or just go to the gym to keep fit, have a bit of fun with it, sleep late, struggle the next day, probably miss training and eventually give up.
“It’s not about me elevating myself to have some sort of Hollywood status where I want to disconnect from the real world. No matter how far you go, I firmly believe that you’ll always come back to your roots. The biggest aspect is being able to take people with me, to have them see what’s on the other side, what’s achievable in life.”
