Ahead of his comeback fight against Jermaine Franklin on Saturday, former two-time unified world heavyweight champion Anthony Joshua has opened up about his mental health and how he adopted a new mindset after losing his titles to Oleksandr Usyk.
Speaking to BBC Newsbeat, Joshua said that he made ‘a conscious decision last year to put my heart into boxing and nothing else’ and that ‘the minute you give up is the minute your mental health wins – you’ve just got to keep on going’.
Emotions clearly got the better of Joshua after his second defeat to Usyk, but he appears to have moved on from it. ‘You don’t really have time to deal with your mental health at the time,’ he said. ‘You just have them quiet moments and outbursts where you just go crazy.’
Shortly after the fight, Joshua said he was ‘hurting a lot’ and looking back he now admits it was a ‘bumpy’ time for him, but ‘look where it’s led me now – to the O2 Arena in London competing again’.
Despite his positive mindset, Joshua has said that should he lose on Saturday and suffer a third straight defeat, he’ll retire from boxing altogether.
‘I will retire if I lose,’ he told Mail Online on Tuesday. ‘I’m not here to battle people. If people want me to retire I will retire. I’m not going to fight if people don’t want me too. It’s not even about the money. It’s about the competitor in you. That’s what’s important.
‘You lot put so much pressure on me so when I am done, the chains are going to be gone. I am going to be laughing and loving life.’
Joshua will face Jermaine Franklin at the O2 Arena in London on Saturday 1 April.
