What is going on with former WBA/WBO/IBF heavyweight champ Anthony Joshua? This is the question plenty of fight fans find themselves asking right now due to the odd things AJ has had to say, firstly about Lennox Lewis, and now about his June stoppage loss to Andy Ruiz. Speaking on Sky Sports’ ‘AJ: The Untold Truth,’ Joshua, when asked how he lost to Ruiz, replied, “by a lucky punch.”
Joshua initially took the defeat, the first of his pro career, with both grace and class, with zero excuses offered. In fact, plenty of people got on Joshua’s case for the way he was too gentlemanly, too “happy” after the loss. But now, having first raised eyebrows by calling heavyweight great Lewis a “clown,” Joshua has got people wondering just how grounded with reality is is by stating how Ruiz merely got lucky back on June 1. Joshua even stated how Ruiz “ain’t that skillful.”
“I don’t know what concussion is, but for sure, after the fight I didn’t know what round [the fight was stopped in],” Joshua said. “So I’m just shocked it took Ruiz another four rounds to get me out. Let me concuss Ruiz – he won’t get back up. Ruiz got hit by a flash knockdown – he was still raw, he wasn’t well-done, he wasn’t cooked yet. I should have left him a little bit longer. But the instinct in me was: ‘Boom!’ I ended up getting caught with a left hook on the top of the head. He ain’t that skillful. He’s a good fighter.”
Maybe, with the rematch looming, Joshua has to convince himself that he was the victim of a lucky punch, that he was not in fact beaten, in almost every round of the entire fight, by the better man. Joshua has to get his confidence levels up as high as he can, after all. The fact is, though, Joshua has never been too hard to hit (see his fights with Dillian Whyte, Wladimir Klitschko and, to a degree, Alexander Povetkin and Carlos Takam), and Ruiz found big holes in his defence.
Luck had nothing to do with it.
Some fighters are never the same after losing for the first time. Might Joshua become known as a fighter to join the list?
