British heavyweight Anthony Joshua’s relationship with his former coaches has made headlines recently.
As well as claiming his first trainer Rob McCracken didn’t teach him defence, former two-time world champion Joshua has also said that Robert Garcia, the man who took him into a second fight against Oleksandr Usyk, taught him nothing.
Speaking to Little Giant Boxing, Garcia was asked for his thoughts on the matter.
“I don’t really pay attention to that. I didn’t hear it. Somebody read it to me, but to me, it’s just what boxing is, man. When you’re with a fighter everything is going well then at the end something goes wrong and the first one to blame is the trainer.”
He then went on to offer insight into their time together.
“One thing I will tell you, when I first got to training camp in London in England, the first week, there was things that they were doing, people involved, it’s just not my style and honestly I have all the emails where I told the management team, I said please fly me home, it was a joke.”
Expanding on the matter, Garcia said he asked continuously to be sent home.
“The way it was going, the people involved, things they were doing to prepare for a fight, things were going on in training camp I would just sit and laugh by myself.
I told the management team can you just please fly me home I’m not going to be part of this, they convinced me to stay, change things around, which I did – I changed things around and we ended up doing good.
But one week into camp I was ready to leave camp so if that was the case [that they weren’t happy with me] they should have sent me home when I wanted to go.”
Right now Joshua is coming off the back of a second win with latest coach Derrick James.
After outpointing Jermaine Franklin in April, this last weekend he scored a highlight reel knockout of Robert Helenius. It is widely expected that Deontay Wilder will be next up in one of Joshua’s biggest-ever challenges.