Anthony Joshua on the vulnerabilities of Tyson Fury and the pressure of fame

Anthony Joshua saw vulnerabilities in Tyson Fury while watching his British rival from ringside at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium in April.

There purely to take notes on a rival he was in negotiations to fight later in the year, Joshua refused to enter the ring on Fury's request after the comebacking former champion had been confirmed as a unanimous decision victor over Arslanbek Makhmudov.

Fury, 35-2-1 (24 KOs), then did Fury things. He shouted, he laughed, he teased. But there was nothing he could have done to get Joshua in the ring that night.

“The contracts weren’t signed,” Joshua explained to DAZN about his decision to stay seated. “If they had been I’d have got in the ring. I was there on a scouting mission. Let’s see what my future opponents are going to look like… I saw a lot. I saw some good, I saw some vulnerabilities in there.”

Joshua returns on July 25 against Kristian Prenga in Saudi Arabia. A warm-up, before fighting Fury later in the year, was always the plan.

“When [Fury] asked me to get in the ring, it’s a Tyson Fury show. Why am I going to get in the ring at a Tyson Fury show? If he wants to come into the ring, after I win on July 25, feel welcome. Come into my territory; I’m the landlord, I’m going to welcome you into my home… If he wants, come to Jeddah, we can get in the ring, face to face, ‘cos the contracts are signed. I need to get through Prenga, which I’m going to, then I’m going to relish in the Tyson Fury fight.”

Joshua has been through a lot recently. The circus-style, pre-Christmas Jake Paul contest, won in six by “AJ”, was followed post-Christmas by the horror of a tragic car accident in Nigeria. Joshua made it from the wreckage alive. Two of his closest friends, Sina Ghami and Latif Ayodele, did not.

Going straight from that, and into a fight with Fury, was never an option for Joshua, 29- 4 (26 KOs). He admits he needs the performance against Prenga to act as a confidence booster; he wants to feel like his old self again. Destructive. Fearless. Ambitious.

After winning Olympic gold in 2012, Joshua’s rise was rapid. All-comers were demolished and quickly. The Englishman with the wrecking ball hands had snared the attention of the world.

Yet when the ascent continued and Joshua picked up IBF, WBA and WBO heavyweight titles, the attention – as he sold out stadiums in the UK – only became more claustrophobic. “The noise was challenging when I was unified champion, it was a lot,” Joshua admitted. “There was a lot of pressure. Questioning why I wear air pods, everything gets questioned. How did I cope with it? I couldn’t even answer… [It was every] minute, hourly, daily.”

It's true. Joshua was under intense scrutiny, inside the ring and out. Something had to give, and in the end, it did. A shocking loss to Andy Ruiz in 2019 was avenged but the first of two back-to-back defeats to Oleksandr Usyk followed two years later. In 2024, at Wembley Stadium, his career reached crisis point when he was knocked out by Daniel Dubois.

“I wanted to get out of the UK,” Joshua said of the time he left coach Ben Davison following the loss to Dubois and joined Usyk in Valencia. “There’s a lot of pressure being at home. My phone number ain’t changed. My local gym hasn’t changed. For the level of focus I need, it needs to be a [training] camp environment.

“[Usyk’s] the best in the world. So, let’s go and see what he’s doing, what barriers he’s breaking, and if I can emulate that in training, I think the results will follow in the ring.”

How will the unique and long-ingrained training methods of Usyk help Joshua, now 36 years old, to improve?

“One of my main issues was conditioning," Joshua explained. "Their conditioning is supreme and I’m not just talking about doing S&C and circuits in the gym for the sake of it, we’re talking about boxing conditioning,” he said. “I’ve been there for weeks and weeks sometimes and we don’t even hit a pad. Sparring, bag work, shadow boxing, rounds of improving your focus, improving your boxing IQ. It’s good, man, I’ve still so much room to improve, I’m getting my legs back, getting my mind back in the game.”

For the first time since his career took off, Joshua is focusing only on boxing. Any other business interests have for now been shelved.

“Staying away from home helps me get that focus that I need, I’ve been getting distracted. Along the way I want to do a lot; I’ve got big ambitions in life, but I feel like I need to get back on that frequency where all my ambitions are aligned to boxing. I feel like getting away from home has been one of those things that has been good for me.

“The goal, obviously, is to set yourself up [financially] to be able to stop [boxing]. But I don’t want to.”