Page 97 - 2018 Powerlist

NEW Anthony Joshua up.” He steamed through the amateur ranks, winning the Sport
2018 national ABA championship in 2010 and taking silver at
World heavyweight boxing champion the 2011 European Amateur Boxing Championships. A year
later he became an Olympic champion in London.
Joshua – known as Femi to his oldest friends, a play
From teenage tearaway to heavyweight champion of the on his full name Anthony Oluwafemi Olaseni Joshua
world, 27-year-old Anthony Joshua’s rise from petty crime – originally turned down £50,000 to turn professional
and fighting on the streets of Watford has been meteoric. straight away, preferring to take things slowly.
He confesses that, if it weren’t for boxing, “I would be But by 2015 he was Commonwealth heavyweight
behind bars”. Indeed, as a youth he had cautions for ABH, champion after beating Gary Cornish in the first round
found himself on remand in Reading prison for two weeks at the 02 Arena, then added the British heavyweight title
and was electronically tagged for 14 months. to his cabinet that December after knocking out Dillian
After that near miss with jail, however, he moved from Whyte in the seventh round.
the hostel where he had been staying back in with his In 2016 he scored his first world title against then
social worker mother and began a bricklaying course. And, champion Charles Martin and, most famously, he faced
in 2007, at 17, he joined a local boxing club. Wladimir Klitschko at Wembley Stadium this April,
A natural, he was picked for the British boxing squad winning in a high-drama fight to retain the
– but nearly jeopardised his sporting career when he was IBF heavyweight title and the WBA super and IBO
caught speeding while wearing his Team GB tracksuit, and heavyweight trophies.
police found cannabis in his kitbag. Handed a 12-month He was awarded an MBE in 2013 for services to boxing
suspended sentence and 100 hours’ community service, and is only the second British boxer to win Olympic gold
Joshua said: “I’m glad it happened, because it woke me and a world title.

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