Former unified heavyweight champion, Anthony Joshua, has remained tight-lipped on information regarding his next opponent, but has assured fans that he and his team will have no trouble finding someone to share the ring with.
Joshua has suffered back-to-back defeats for the first time in a boxing ring, as an amateur or professional, at the hands of Oleksandr Usyk. Whilst ‘AJ’ remains one of the biggest names in the sport, there is a feel that he is now at his most vulnerable as he desperately seeks a win to get a title challenge going.
There were whispers of a fight with Filip Hrgovic, who holds the position as the mandatory challenger for the IBF world title and shares the same promoter as ‘AJ’, however the stronger rumours are of a rematch with old rival Dillian Whyte.
Joshua was in attendance at Dillian Whyte’s fight last night and told iFL TV that he sees all his potential opponents as ‘bodies’, including Whyte.
“Bring whoever really, there’s a lot of people queuing up to fight me, so it’s not going to be hard to find an opponent.”
“Another body, it’s just another body. I don’t look at them as like Dillian [Whyte] or who’s who, I just look at them as bodies. So it’s just another body for me really.”
“It won’t be hard to find an opponent to fight me, so all the talks are realistic, we already have a couple talks [ongoing] but we are still in 2022 and I’m sure in 2023, someone will step up. People want to fight me as well, so it’s not hard to find an opponent.”
“For fighters, I don’t think it is just about the money. They want to see how good they are, put themselves up in the rankings, they want to test their skills, they want to test themselves, the same way I do as well.”
Whyte won the fight against American Jermaine Franklin with the hopes of setting up the rematch with ‘AJ”.
However a laboured performance where many believe Franklin’s effort wasn’t represented on the scorecards may well have killed some of the hype around the fight, and could lead Joshua to consider alternative opponents.
