Our very own Anthony Joshua lost his heavyweight world titles in a stunning upset to Andy Ruiz at Madison Square Garden on Saturday night.
The defeat as hard as it was to watch saw AJ visiting the canvas four times inside seven rounds!
An unforeseeable nightmare unravelled before us as the former IBF, WBA, IBO and WBO world heavyweight champion was knocked down in a fight he wasn't even supposed to lose.
Unsurprisingly, the naysayers have started to troop out in trickles with projections of doom and their quick conclusions.
Frank Warren, the lead promoter for heavyweight Tyson Fury said "After the fight, he didn't seem very upset at losing his title. I was very disappointed. I'm not saying you should be a bad sportsman, but it was like he was relieved to get out of there. I was surprised it was Ruiz who did it. Joshua is easy to hit. His defense is pretty awful and it hasn't improved at all since he turned professional."
Yeah, because him squeezing his face and cussing out his opponent is going to change anything??
Glenn McCrory former IBF cruiserweight champion said “He’s bottom of the pile. He got beaten up by Andy Ruiz.”
“I think he’s finished. It’s not just the defeat, anybody can get defeated, but the nature of it.'
This Glenn probably didnt hear what they said about Tiger woods when his career was 'supposedly' over. Nobody ever stays down except they decide to. Sheer grit and determination would pull a man out of the bottom of any pile.
Maybe AJ got sloppy or too confident because he said: “I didn’t even ask about a rematch clause because I was so confident I was going to win. If it’s there, we’ll go again and I’ll get the titles back. I’m going to beat him up. I’m not dwelling on it. You just correct it, you adjust, you sit down, you focus and you go again.”
''Life is a journey. This is boxing. What I have to do is re-evaluate the situation, make it better and we go again. We didn’t come this far to stop, we didn’t come this far to fold under pressure. We came this far and I definitely feel like we can go a lot further.”
Now that is the SPIRIT!!!
Anthony Oluwafemi Olaseni Joshua was born on 15 October 1989 in Watford, Hertfordshire, the son of Yeta and Robert Joshua. His mother is Nigerian, while his father is of Nigerian and Irish ancestry.
Joshua spent some of his early years in Nigeria as a boarding school student at Mayflower School in Ikenne. Following his parents' divorce when he was 12, he returned to the UK.
We said all that to say this, the Nigerian blood flows in AJ and cliche or not Naija No Dey Carry Last.
Great fighters come back and improve. Some fighters never come back the same. The future will show how Anthony Joshua responds.
We know how, don't we?
He will DEFINITELY rise again.
