By Charles Brun: Floyd Mayweather Jr. says Anthony Joshua’s loss to Oleksandr Usyk last September was NOT an “upset” defeat, the way many boxing fans, fighters, and promoters have been saying.
Mayweather points out that the 2012 Olympic gold medalist Usyk came from an outstanding amateur background. He wasn’t given the same attention from the media and the television networks that Joshua received as a professional.
So instead of fans seeing Usyk’s fights and hearing about him, they mainly saw the 2012 Olympic gold medalist Joshua.
Many boxing fans had Joshua being GIFTED a gold medal in the 2012 Olympics in London
Joshua’s questionable victories in the 2012 Olympics
- Erislandy Savon
- Roberto Cammarelle
- Ivan Dychko
This writer had Joshua losing all four of his fights in the Olympics, and AJ should have lost to Cammarelle, Dychko, Savon, and Zhang Zhilei.
So it wasn’t a shock that he would later get beaten by Usyk after dodging a bullet against a 40-year-old Wladimir Klitschko in 2017.
So in Mayweather’s view, there was nothing controversial about Joshua’s loss.
Floyd says he saw from the jump that Joshua had some flaws that he needed to work on, and he’s offered to help him, but nothing came of it.
“That was NOT an upset,” said Floyd Mayweather Jr. when asked about Anthony Joshua’s loss to former undisputed cruiserweight champion Oleksandr Usyk.
“Usyk was a hell of a fighter and a gold medalist if I’m not mistaken, but he was behind the scenes,” said Mayweather in referring to Usyk not being given the same attention by the networks and the media as Joshua.
Mayweather is dead-on correct about Joshua being given massive exposure in the UK, thanks to his controversial Olympic gold medal in 2012. Additionally, Joshua was given a significant boost fighting on Sky Sports and having Eddie Hearn promoting him.
With Hearn crowing night and day about how great Joshua was, it got a lot of casuals on the bandwagon, becoming fans without looking at how badly flawed he was.
Combining all of those things made Joshua look better than he was. We never Joshua fighting anyone good except for the old-timer Wladimir Klitschko, who was 40 by the time he fought AJ and coming off a year-long layoff and a defeat at the hands of Tyson Fury in his previous fight.
Even with all that, Wladimir still came within an eyelash of beating Joshua. If not for the blundering move on Wladimir’s part to let Joshua off the hook after dropping him in the sixth, he likely would have knocked him out in the seventh, and there wouldn’t have been all the empty hype about him for the last four years.
“It was two guys [Joshua and Usyk] with crazy amateur backgrounds, and one guy [Oleksandr] is not being seen, and another guy is being seen. We call it an upset.
“No. It was just that he [Usyk] was working behind the scenes and another guy was working in front of everybody,” said Mayweather on Joshua being seen nonstop on Sky Sports in the UK and on DAZN in the U.S.
“I think with Anthony Joshua; they keep going, ‘This coach is going to work for him.’ I told him from the beginning when he was undefeated, ‘You got some things you still need to tweak because if you don’t, then you may come up short,” said Mayweather.
“They had to meet up, and Anthony Joshua came up short, and Anthony Joshua, I told him from the beginning. He can become, and I can teach him some pointers because a lot of times, the same coach that you had as an amateur, doesn’t always make him a great professional coach.
“Some guys are great amateur coaching, and some guys are great at professional coaching,” said Mayweather. “Even my dad. I felt he was the best at professional because he was teaching me without the amateur and was teaching me like a professional.
“I’m always going to speak the real whether somebody likes it or not,” said Mayweather.
