By Declan Taylor
ANTHONY JOSHUA is halfway through explaining why he has decided to make his move to Ben Davison a permanent one when he whips his iPhone out of his trouser pocket and opens up the notes app.
“I do my own stuff,” he says, beginning to scroll. “For example with Ngannou…”
By now he is scrolling past a number of bullet points next to chunky paragraphs, too quick to read the specifics but slow enough to see he has already prepared an extensive dossier on his next opponent.
“You can see here,” he says. “I do my own research. These are my own notes that I take, like punch stats and what I have to work on.”
It is just 23 days since Joshua crushed Otto Wallin in Saudi Arabia’s capital and he is already back on the campaign trail with another trip to the desert booked for March 8.
Throughout that previous promotion Joshua had appeared relatively surly, intensely focused and in absolutely no mood for lengthy discussions about anything. But with Wallin taken care of and another gargantuan bag already secured, it is not surprising that it is a different Joshua, reclining on a sofa, shooting the breeze backstage at the Tottenham Court Road press conference venue seemingly preferred by the Saudi organisers.
“I think it was like December 27th or 28th that this fight was made,” he says of the Riyadh Season showdown with 0-1 Francis Ngannou. “It didn’t take long to make, either. It never does with me. Just got it done quick.
“It is good actually that other people can match my speed when it comes to making fights but it’s still probably not the fights that people wanna see. There’s two fights that people really want to see me in: Wilder and Fury, and they haven’t happened yet.
“But I always say: I’m not complicated to work with. So I’m glad we’re able to showcase that we’re easy to work with, but I know it’s still not the fights that people are screaming to see.”
However, Joshua is acutely aware that he has been handed a gilded opportunity to not only maintain his heightened activity levels and keep himself in the Saudi picture but also to do a better job on Ngannou than Tyson Fury did back in October, when the Gypsy King was dropped but left the Kingdom with a controversial split decision.
“There is an element of that,” Joshua says. “It’s all about perception in boxing. It just changes the whole perception if I can go out there and have a good fight. ‘Oh, AJ’s the king!’ my fans will roar louder. But I’ve still got a massive training camp to complete, I’ve still got to get through the fight first! Let’s get there first before we start thinking ahead.”
One particular shout that was common in the aftermath of the five-round beatdown of Wallin was: “the old AJ is back”. And, although he stopped short of declaring that himself, the 34-year-old explained why his switch to Davison has given him a new lease of life.
“I definitely feel refreshed,” Joshua says, nodding. “I told the boys that there was a time where I felt I could download all the information in the ring. But when you are downloading information in the ring, you are having to walk through punches as it happens.
“I was getting better but so was my opposition, so I said I didn’t want to keep downloading information on my own. I was learning through the fight, as it was going on. But now Ben has a team and they do a lot of the learning for me in a way. I do my own stuff too, but I don’t have to download all that information in the ring anymore.”
It means Joshua’s two-fight link-up with Texas-based Derrick James is over for what the two-time heavyweight champion described as largely logistical reasons. Harlow-based Davison, therefore, becomes Joshua’s fourth permanent coach since leaving Rob McCracken.
“I do my own research,” he says, phone in hand. “But Ben and the team are doing theirs as well. Maybe I am back to the old AJ because I don’t have to download anymore. I already know what I have to do. That’s what I was looking for.
“I’d be like, ‘Rob [McCracken], come on man, we’ve got to do more.’ I I was fighting at a high level but he had the Olympics as well so it couldn’t work because of the level I was at.
“I needed someone to pay attention to the finest details. That’s why I went away and tried to find myself and my own style but now I have a team that pays so much attention to detail. With the Wallin fight, I just knew what I had to do. I didn’t have to download no information. I just knew. With Ngannou I need to get to that stage where I just know.
“I will have a one-track mind, I will just know, it will just be bam-bam-bam-BANG! A good performance is a boring fight because the better fighter is totally dominant. I don’t want a slugfest, I don’t to be swapping punches and thinking ‘what the fuck am I supposed to do?’
I don’t want to take 10 rounds to land a knockout shot.”
Joshua and Ngannou came face to face in Barcelona earlier this week to shoot the latest big-budget promotional video while they spent much of this press conference day (January 15) filming content alongside each other. It was a chance for the London 2012 Olympic champion to properly size up the former UFC star.
“He has longer arms than me,” Joshua says. “He’s stocky and big.
“But I think people underestimate me, they think they can just come and put pressure on me because I am not mentally all that or this. And as much as there is hype around Ngannou, he still has to come through me. He is looking at someone who knows how to fight.
“I am a power puncher myself. I break people’s eye sockets. I broke Wallin’s nose and eye socket, Helenius got sparked out, and I fucking ruined Dillian Whyte’s career with an uppercut. The list goes on.
“He has to deal with me and that is what is going to make it a good fight.”