Frank Warren tells Anthony Joshua to ‘get rid of all his trainers’ after Oleksandr Usyk defeat

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Tyson Fury’s promoter Frank Warren has said Anthony Joshua might have to change his entire coaching team in order to beat Oleksandr Usyk in a rematch.

Ukrainian Usyk outpointed Joshua in London last month to take the Briton’s heavyweight titles, with a second bout between the pair expected to take place next spring.

Warren has now claimed that Joshua must take drastic measures if he is to reverse the result in a rematch with the undefeated Usyk.

Speaking to SecondsOut ahead of Fury’s trilogy fight with Deontay Wilder for the WBC heavyweight belt, Warren said: “Should [Joshua] fight [Usyk] again? If he does what he does last time, I don’t see him beating him. Even then, I think Usyk will get more out of that win than Joshua.

“I just don’t see what Joshua can do any different to win that fight other than get rid of all the trainers around him and try change what he’s doing. Will he do that?

“I said if Usyk’s there at the end he’ll win on points. What I didn’t expect was the way he won. I really thought that AJ would have come out and pose his physical attributes more – his jab, his size – which he didn’t.

“I thought as far as Usyk was concerned, I thought he’d have to roll under him, get underneath his jab and work inside. He didn’t do that, he was out-jabbing the guy with the longer reach and the bigger guy.

“I was quite shocked at that. He hurt him in the fight. He wobbled him early on and certainly in the last round I think the bell saved [Joshua], he would have been stopped otherwise. There was no debate about how he got beat, he got beat.”

Earlier this year, Joshua and Fury were seemingly on the verge of finalising a two-fight deal, but an arbitrator ruled that Fury must first fight Wilder for a third time, with former cruiserweight Usyk then arriving as Joshua’s mandatory challenger.

Fury fought Wilder to a controversial split draw in December 2018 before stopping the American in the seventh round of their rematch in February 2020.

All the while, Joshua avenged his stoppage loss to Andy Ruiz Jr from June 2019 by defeating the Mexican-American in December of the same year, winning via decision to regain his IBF, IBO, WBA and WBO titles.

A long-awaited, all-British unification bout between Joshua and Fury seems increasingly unlikely, with Fury needing to beat Wilder this Saturday and Joshua required to regain his belts once more in order for the historic contest to come to fruition as desired.

Even then, there could be further hurdles along the way in the form of mandatory challengers.