The Joshua Files , livre ebook

Pitch Publishing - Matt Bozeat

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103 pages

English

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Description

The Joshua Files traces the story of Britain''s latest heavyweight hero from the building site to the top of the boxing world and beyond. His fight with Wladimir Klitschko, before 90,000 fans at Wembley Stadium, made him not just a national hero but a global star as well. He has the personality and punch to become the biggest sports star on the planet.

Sujets

Boxing

Xian de Boxing

Informations

Publié par	Pitch Publishing
Date de parution	01 juin 2018
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781785314216
Langue	English
Poids de l'ouvrage	3 Mo

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0500€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

Extrait

First published by Pitch Publishing, 2018

Pitch Publishing
A2 Yeoman Gate
Yeoman Way
Durrington
BN13 3QZ
www.pitchpublishing.co.uk
2018, Matt Bozeat
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the Publisher.
A CIP catalogue record is available for this book from the British Library.
Print ISBN 978-1-78531-391-2 eBook ISBN 978-1-78531-421-6
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Ebook Conversion by www.eBookPartnership.com
Contents
About the author
Acknowledgements
Foreword
Introduction
Fight No 1 Emanuele Leo
Fight No 2 Paul Butlin
Fight No 3 Hrvoje Kisicek
Fight No 4 Dorian Darch
Fight No 5 Hector Avila
Fight No 6 Matt Legg
Fight No 7 Matt Skelton
Fight No 8 Konstantin Airich
Fight No 9 Denis Bakhtov
Fight No 10 Michael Sprott
Fight No 11 Jason Gavern
Fight No 12 Raphael Zumbano Love
Fight No 13 Kevin Johnson
Fight No 14 Gary Cornish
Fight No 15 Dillian Whyte
Fight No 16 Charles Martin
Fight No 17 Dominic Breazeale
Fight No 18 Eric Molina
Fight No 19 Wladimir Klitschko
Fight No 20 Carlos Takam
Anthony Joshua Professional Record
DEDICATION
For my perfect little girl Carla Diana, Lydia, Mum and Dad Always in my thoughts Mum
About the author
Matt Bozeat was still at school when he started writing for his local newspaper, the Northampton Chronicle and Echo .
He has gone on to work for numerous publications, including Boxing News and Boxing Monthly and has worked in television for Sky Sports, BT Sport, ITV, Channel Five and Box Nation. He also writes regularly for leading website, Boxing Social.
From Leicester, he lives in Lichfield with his partner Lydia and their young daughter, Carla Diana.
Acknowledgements
Thanks to the following for their time and help - Eddie Hearn, Paul Butlin, Matt Legg, Dorian Darch, Matt Skelton, Michael Sprott, Raphael Zumbano Love, Tommy Gilmour, Andy Brown, Ronald McIntosh, Bob Mee, Declan Johnson, Nick Halling and John Wischhusen. Thanks also to Pitch Publishing and in particular their editorial team of Gareth Davis, Graham Hales and Dean Rockett.
Foreword
I VE BEEN blessed to enjoy over 40 years in boxing and in that time, I have seen so many wonderful, and sometimes tragic, fighters, fights and events.
No division has provided more of the above than the heavyweight division.
It was The Greatest himself, Muhammad Ali, who lit my burning desire for the sport and the likes of Larry Holmes, Mike Tyson, Lennox Lewis and Evander Holyfield that would keep that flame burning bright as I made my own way in the sport as a boxer and then behind the microphone.
I watched Lennox, sometimes a little too closely, as he rose from Olympic glory to become a dominant world heavyweight champion and to see all that again seemed unlikely.
But along came a youngster who would rise through the amateur ranks to Olympic gold in London and then heavyweight superstardom.
Anthony Joshua has set the boxing world on fire and in this excellent book, my friend Matt Bozeat brings you, from his ringside seat, the punch by punch graphic details of his story, a must read for all boxing and AJ fans as he tells the story from humble beginnings to a fairytale at Wembley Stadium.
This is a terrific book from a true boxing man and the best account of the making of a boxing legend.
Glenn McCrory (former IBF cruiserweight champion) February, 2018
Introduction
GROWING UP, boxing didn t interest Femi .
Never watched it, said Anthony Oluwafemi Olaseni Joshua, to give him his full name.
He was too busy climbing things!
As a child, I used to get bored a lot, Joshua told Sky Sports. I remember being bored, always out. I m a real street kid. I like to be out exploring, that s my type of thing. Sitting at home on the computer isn t really what I was brought up doing. I was really active, climbing trees, poles and in the woods.
He also ran fast. Joshua reportedly ran 100 metres in 11 seconds when he was 14 years old, had a few training sessions at Callowland Amateur Boxing Club and scored lots of goals on the football pitch.
One season, he scored 43 goals for Kings Langley School in Watford and had trials with Charlton Athletic, but his temper let him down.
During one game, this guy was trying to wind me up, remembered Joshua in The Sun . I got him round the neck and threw him over my shoulder.
I didn t know my own strength and he didn t land too well. Incredibly, it went to court and I was charged with ABH (Actual Bodily Harm). Luckily, they ended up giving me a slap across the wrist.
The following year, Joshua got more than a slap on the wrist. He spent two weeks on remand in Reading prison for what he described as fighting and other stuff .
My dad is a fighter, revealed Joshua to Sky Sports when asked the roots of his boxing. I ve heard some stories about my dad. He s a real warrior.
He is also a real hard worker and I feel that is where I have inherited it from.
I am my parents and my parents are hard-working people, very strong-minded people, and that s who I am.
His parents, mother Yeta Odusanya and father Robert, had left Nigeria in their 20s and settled on the Meriden estate in Watford, a town around 20 miles north of London.
Anthony s parents separated when he was still an infant and Yeta took him to Nigeria when he was 12 or 13 , apparently intending to move back there.
I thought I was going there on holiday, said Joshua, but he found himself being enrolled in a boarding school.
Every morning we would be woken up at 5.30 and then we had to fetch water, he said.
You had to heat the water up by putting a hot iron in it, then you had to make sure all your school clothes were cleaned and ironed.
The discipline was tough. Sometimes the whole block would just get punished. It might be the cane or you would stand and squat and hold it for 30 minutes. It was tough.
We got beaten, but that s my culture, beating.
Joshua said I thought I was in heaven when Yeta took him out of the school and back to Watford and he stayed there with his mother until she moved to London when he was 17.
It really worked for her, remembered Joshua, but where my heart was, was in Watford.
I had about five of my aunties and uncles living around the area within a two-minute radius of each other and I did not want to leave the town for any reason, so I asked my aunty if I could stay with her. My mum was happy with it.
My aunty really looked after me and it got to the point where I left school and thought I was a lot more mature than I was and knew a lot more than I did, so I moved out on my own.
Living in a room in a hostel, you felt you had nothing to lose.
In Watford, you have the high street and the bars and the pubs and later at night, the chicken shops.
Even if you don t drink, people get in your space and it easily kicks off. So yeah, it kicked off a few times and I got arrested.
I had to relocate to London to get away from all the trouble because the police banned me from the district for a year.
He moved in with his mother in Golders Green in north London, where the police kept an eye on him.
They fixed an electronic tag to Joshua s ankle to trace his whereabouts and ensure he was where he was meant to be.
I had to be home at 7.30 every night and it was really tough, said Joshua, but it taught me discipline, it taught me a routine that I never had.
Being on tag for 13 months meant I had to be home, I had to go and sign in at the station three times a week.
I had a regimented lifestyle and knew I wanted to put on some size. I wanted to go back to my area looking a lot bigger, a lot stronger, because I wanted to maintain that level of respect that I had, so I started lifting weights.
He also started a bricklaying course at college and on the insistence of his cousin, Ben Ileyemi, he went to the boxing gym as well.
He [Ben] brought me down to Finchley [and District] ABC [Amateur Boxing Club], not to train but to watch what he gets up to, remembered Joshua.
Me, I chilled out, I sat back and I watched about three sessions, four sessions, something to keep me occupied.
But I m a real active person and I went and bought some boots when he [Ileyemi] lent me some money and got involved.
The coaches at Finchley and District ABC were Johnny Oliver and Sean Murphy.
Murphy looked after Joshua. He was a Commonwealth Games gold medallist in Edinburgh in 1986 and as a professional, he was a heart-on-his-sleeve featherweight who won the Lonsdale belt outright and challenged Steve Robinson for the WBO championship in 1993.
He got into coaching when, against his wishes, his son Danny decided he wanted to box.
Murphy wasn t impressed by his local club, St Albans Amateur Boxing Club, and took Danny to Finchley.
He started helping out with coaching and ended up becoming head coach.
Nine times out of ten I can tell if someone is going to be any good, said Murphy. Not blowing my own trumpet, but I ll know if they are going to be half decent the first time I take them on the pads.
And from the first time I took him [Joshua] on the pads I knew there was something, I knew there was something there.
I never found this out until later on, but he had done a little bit before he had come to Finchley. Not a lot, but he knew he was orthodox and he knew how to stand.
He always had the perfect build, was mobile and wanted to learn.
He was a pest, but in a good way. He was always, Can we do pads? When are we going to do pads? When am I going to spar? When am I going to do t