Anthony Joshua held his first press conference of 2018 today ahead of his fight on March 31st against Joseph Parker in Cardiff. The Sportsman were at the event and the big talking point came when David Higgins, Parker’s promoter, stated that AJ was mentally weaker than the New Zealander.
Eddie Hearn leapt to his fighters’ defence picking him up on that statement and dismissing it confidently. “You don’t do what he is doing and be mentally weak. You don’t walk out in front of your home city and win gold at the Olympics. You don’t walk out in front of 80,000, empty your tank, get up of the floor and stop Vladimir Klitschko if you’re mentally weak.”
This came after Higgins had questioned Joshua’s resilience saying:
‘There’s been a bit of talk. ‘Speaking personally, I have an immense amount of respect for Joshua and his team. ‘Winning Olympic gold is remarkable and we respect that and winning 20 straight fights and winning two belts. ‘Having said that… ‘It’s normal to analyse strengths and weaknesses. ‘It came as a surprise when we pointed out chinks in his armour. ‘He’s been dropped a few times. Incidentally, Joseph has never been dropped. If they’re trading what do we know? One guy hasn’t been dropped but the other guy has.’
This fight unifies the WBA, IBF, WBO and IBO World titles and will be the first time in history that two reigning heavyweight champions have fought in Britain.
Anthony Joshua went on to say he isn’t really interested in all the talking before the fighting. He said: “We're here to handle business. First is the verbal wars before the physical ones. What can I say about the verbals, I’m not really into it as such because it’s an opportunity for both camps, you know,
I’d fight him in a car park for free. It don’t matter to me.”
You can see the face-off between the fighters as they held their belts below.
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