I know Joshua Buatsi very well but, at the same time, I don’t know him at all.<\/p>\n
Buatsi, who fights fellow Briton Zach Parker at light-heavyweight in Manchester on Saturday night, is an incredibly private man. <\/p>\n
In fact, he might be one of the most private boxers I’ve ever known.<\/p>\n
He has great Christian faith. He stands in a pulpit and preaches. He does so much work in different parts of the world, specifically Ghana, which is the country of his heritage.<\/p>\n
None of this is covered, and he doesn’t want any of it covered.<\/p>\n
So there is no doubt that Buatsi is a great man.<\/p>\n
But as a boxer, is he where I expected him to be, having watched him in the flesh winning Olympic bronze for Great Britain at Rio 2016?<\/p>\n
No, he’s not. I thought he might be a little bit further advanced. That doesn’t mean he won’t get where I expect him to get, though.<\/p>\n
Since turning pro in 2017, Buatsi has had hard, tough fights but has never taken a beating.<\/p>\n
He’s 32, but he’s relatively fresh. He’s been learning, certainly in the last two or three years. He’s not been over-fighting. He’s not weary and he’s not tired.<\/p>\n
With the way things can open up – a vacant title or two – I do think he will become a world champion.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"I know Joshua Buatsi very well but, at the same time, I don’t know him at all. Buatsi,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":236511,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[41],"tags":[2560,101,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-236510","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-boxing","8":"tag-boxing","9":"tag-sports","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom","12":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/236510","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=236510"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/236510\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/236511"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=236510"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=236510"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=236510"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}