Finchley Amateur Boxing Club is the closest the public can get to the real Anthony Joshua. An Olympic gold medallist and a two-times world heavyweight champion with a net worth nearing £200million, he soared into the mainstream like no British boxer before him, while always maintaining a carefully curated image that even a Louis Theroux special struggled to penetrate.
But in the gym where he first laced up a pair of gloves aged 18 and photographs of the lanky latecomer adorn the walls lies a treasure trove of memories about a polite but mischievous prodigy.
Sean Murphy, Joshua’s first amateur coach, who remains a close confidant, is guilty of supplying most of them. Take the time Joshua, who went from novice to national champion inside three years, introduced one of his girlfriends to Murphy’s wife before the morning training session. “He came back later on for the second session with a different girl on his arm. He went over to my missus again and she said: ‘Josh, you better f*** off or else I’m going to tell that young lady who you were here with earlier,’ and he went away with a tail between his legs,” he says, laughing.
Joshua defeated Italy’s Roberto Cammarelle to claim Olympic gold at London 2012 but almost didn’t make Team GB after an arrest for cannabis possession
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Or the prestigious awards do where Joshua won the prize for best amateur. He told Murphy he didn’t drink and was heading home at midnight. “We were driving back through Finchley and there was a queue outside this nightclub and who’s standing there? Anthony Joshua. He was trying to put his head down. I rolled down the window and said, ‘I didn’t realise you lived here!’”
Not to forget when Joshua was caught red-handed at a roulette table at 2am with his cousin on a trip to Las Vegas the night before an international tournament. “Everyone was looking at me. This little fella telling these two huge fellas to go to bed [on the casino floor]. They went, but then my missus followed them and caught them as they tried to come back down.”
Of course, it was not all harmless teenage fun. It was only years later Murphy discovered that when Joshua first attended evening sessions at Finchley, he was wearing a tag and had to rush home to ensure he didn’t breach his 8pm curfew. More than once Murphy received calls from Joshua’s mother, whom he lived with in a two-bedroom council flat in Golders Green, asking him to make sure that her son returned to training because he had fallen in with the wrong crowd.
From left, coaches Murphy and John Oliver with Joshua at Finchley ABC
When Joshua was pulled over for speeding and arrested in his GB Boxing tracksuit after officers discovered nine ounces of cannabis in his car in 2011, it was Murphy who connected Joshua, via a local charity, to a specialist lawyer and helped ensure that he avoided a prison sentence.
It is worth revisiting that turbulent grounding in the sport — Joshua nearly missed the 2012 Olympics due to his conviction — to put his career into perspective 18 years later. Despite suffering a brutal defeat in his last bout against Daniel Dubois in September 2024, Joshua’s star power has hardly diminished.
This week he stands to earn in excess of $50million (more than £37million) for fighting Jake Paul, a former Disney star who he should beat in first gear. Purists have criticised Joshua for taking the bout but as his promoter Eddie Hearn says: “We got a phone call and were asked to fight Jake Paul in an eight-rounder for a near career-high payday. There isn’t a man alive who wouldn’t take this fight. Do I think AJ is going to knock him spark out within two rounds? Absolutely.”
Joshua, right, is expected to make light work of Paul, left, who has only fought one heavyweight — a 58-year-old Tyson
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And so to query how it ended up here would be like the man that imposed on George Best as he lay in bed with Miss World, but Hearn concedes that Joshua may not have accepted the fight as readily five years ago. There is a public tendency to be hypercritical of Joshua, a narrative that he was eventually exposed as overhyped, but that was in large part because of how quickly he became a juggernaut.
“He’s perfect. One: he’s a great fighter. Two: he’s carved out of stone. Three: he’s a lovely fellow with a great heart,” Hearn says. “People can say, ‘Anyone can promote Anthony Joshua.’ Yes, to a level, but the way we manoeuvred him and built him as a fighter and a commercial beast in the sporting world was one of our great achievements.”
Paul, left, and Joshua face off before the fight on Saturday
ANTHONY JOSHUA/X
The dramatic night Joshua defeated Wladimir Klitschko at Wembley Stadium in 2017 to become unified heavyweight champion was one of the most iconic in British boxing history. But, in hindsight, it also exposed the frailties that a short, albeit extremely successful, amateur career and shrewd matchmaking as a pro had not yet tested.
In what was supposed to be Joshua’s breakthrough in America, he was stunned by late replacement Andy Ruiz Jr at Madison Square Garden in 2019. Although he avenged the loss six months later in one of the first big boxing fights in Saudi Arabia — Joshua’s brand was already so ironclad by then that criticism from human rights groups washed off — he was arguably never the same.
Ruiz upset the odds at Madison Square Garden in June 2019 ended Joshua’s unbeaten record
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“With fighters, the way I like to put it is when you have a glass and there is a crack, you can polish it, but it is always going to be there,” Angel Fernandez, who joined Joshua’s coaching team after the Ruiz defeat, says.
The chopping and changing of coaches is the clearest evidence of the uncertainty that has engulfed Joshua in recent years. Rob McCracken, the head coach at GB Boxing, had been the voice in Joshua’s corner for a decade until Fernandez joined the team. In Joshua’s first bout against Oleksandr Usyk in 2021, the instructions appeared muddled as he sought to outbox Usyk, one of the most technically accomplished fighters in modern history, instead of imposing his size.
McCracken was sacked before the rematch, a divorce that remains awkward to this day, and, although Joshua was significantly improved, Usyk remained superior, prompting the unedifying outburst when Joshua threw the belts out of the ring before ranting incoherently about his shortcomings.
“I know people say, ‘It was a bit embarrassing in the ring.’ But for so long, AJ, he wasn’t putting on a front, but he feels an obligation to behave a certain way because he’s a role model,” Hearn says. “He’s an ambassador for kids and he wants to be that person.
Hearn, left, was at the press conference in August 2022 when the defeated Joshua broke down after his defeat to Usyk
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“When he broke down in tears [in his post-fight press conference], you never really see that, which is a reflection of the general problem among men that is well documented. He never put that guard down because he wants to be positive. That was the first time he couldn’t put this brave face on any more.”
“I feel it was a little bit more like a breakdown,” Murphy says. “People don’t realise how much pressure they are under, from their peers, the lovers, the haters. It all just got on top of him.”
Joshua has never fully regained his confidence, nor has the public perception wholly recovered. Fernandez used to show him long montages of his old fights and try to restore Joshua’s self-belief. “I used to say, ‘What will it take me to bring that guy back?’” Fernandez says, before suggesting that Joshua’s numerous businesses, sponsorship commitments, and desire to help his friends became a distraction. “He’s a wonderful person. He’s always there for you, but sometimes I think that’s one of his downfalls. If he was more selfish, maybe he would achieve [more].”
But Joshua kept searching for answers. He tried several coaches in the United States before settling on Derrick James, who trained welterweight champion Errol Spence Jr, and rebuilt with wins over Jermaine Franklin and Otto Wallin. Joshua then teamed up with Tyson Fury’s former trainer, Ben Davison, for his vicious knockout win against the MMA fighter Francis Ngannou, but those didn’t represent elite tests.
Fernandez celebrating with the two-times world champion in Saudi Arabia
When he came up against Dubois, whom Joshua used to spar with at GB Boxing, he was badly hurt in the first round and his tactics went out of the window. “Obviously new coaches will try to implement their own style. Anthony is always willing to learn. Changing coaches can be good but I don’t think it has been good for him,” Fernandez says.
Hearn compares Joshua’s dressing room that night to a “morgue” and plenty questioned whether he should fight on in the aftermath. He is already wealthy beyond his wildest dreams and his chances of becoming a three-times world champion appear unlikely. But boxing has consumed his life for so long and those close to him insist the fire still burns.
And so here we are in Miami for a fantastical comeback nobody expected. There is a new training team again too: Usyk’s coaches, who stumped Joshua twice. “Although it is a circus, it actually comes at a brilliant time for him,” Hearn says. A deal has been agreed for Joshua to fight again in February before finally taking on Fury in September — a few years too late, but still the biggest fight in British boxing.
Joshua, pictured on a return trip to his first amateur boxing club, in north London, in 2016, is paying for some of his old coaching team to come to Miami for his fight with Paul
ALAMY
As he enters this final act, Joshua’s career is already extraordinary by any ordinary measure. In some ways, he has been a victim of his own success and the impossible standard set and so voraciously marketed. Triumph made him a household name, tumult hardened his shell towards the public, but Murphy sees little difference in the teenager who once tricked border patrol by using his cousin’s passport — his own had expired — to enter France so that he didn’t miss an international tournament.
A few weeks ago the veteran coach received an impromptu call from Joshua saying he would arrange tickets and flights for his old friends at Finchley to come to Miami for the fight on Friday. He then spoke to two girls who were about to compete for the club to give them encouragement. The two minibuses, the ring, the punchbags and the refurbished weights room at Finchley are all new courtesy of him, but he doesn’t advertise those donations.
“He didn’t need to do that but he’s got a clean heart. He’s never forgotten where he came from and the community he grew up in,” Murphy says. “People can be jealous, but what he did in such a short space of time, for someone who didn’t start boxing until they were 18, it’s unbelievable how he turned his life around, and I think he’ll surprise a few people. He’s not finished yet.”
Anthony Joshua v Jake Paul
Kaseya Centre in Miami, Florida
Saturday, 3.30am (GMT)
TV Netflix