Boxing needs to rein in the hype around Anthony Joshua until he's had an actual test

Most boxing fans would agree that inside and out of the ring, Anthony Joshua is a fine heavyweight prospect. He clearly grafts in the gym and seemingly doesn’t cut corners when it comes to his strength and conditioning. Despite the brevity of his professional bouts to date affording him little opportunity to showcase it, he’s shown himself to have good movement. And as fans of combat sports relish in a fighter, he’s got a nasty streak in the ring with explosive power. Outside the ring, he’s surrounded by a good promotional team, comes across as hugely personable and has certainly taken heed of his media training. The makings of a great fighter, ambassador for the sport and overall star are all there. But let’s not get carried away before Joshua has actually done anything to warrant the hype that is already being laden upon him.

Following every Joshua fight, the boxing media, Joshua’s promotional team, casual fans and even some hardcore ones, heap praise upon him. They declare him ready to beat any heavyweight in the world and deftly so (although with the current lacklustre state of heavyweight boxing, that isn’t the claim it might once have been). They pay no regard for the fact that Joshua hasn’t experienced a single test in any of his opponents as a professional.

I like Joshua and I’m optimistic for his future in the sport. Though the assessment many have of his current attainment in the sport is much exaggerated in contrast to reality.

Joshua has fought 14 professional fights, each one wining by way of KO or TKO. It’s an achievement that can’t be denied but one that needs to be put in context of who he’s fought. With no disrespect to Joshua’s opponents, to date he’s not fought anyone in what has been a 50/50 fight. For all intents and purposes, they’ve served the purpose of keeping Joshua active (thus keeping his promoter and broadcaster happy as they build his profile), padding his record and demonstrating his undeniably ferocious power. What they don’t provide is the slightest challenge. And to be candid, none have turned up to fight or shown any confidence that they can get the W, let alone survive the first few rounds, through anything other than luck. It’s not an attitude that can be credited. Therefore neither can Joshua’s record at 14-0 be given the acclaim many wish to bestow upon it. For Joshua’s opponents, Joshua merely represents a nice payday and a negligible puncher’s chance of derailing the hype train.

Joshua’s future opponent, Dillian Whyte, presents something different. While he’s still an underdog, as amateurs, Whyte handed Joshua an L and even a knockdown in the process. As a result, Whyte’s confidence is high and he doesn’t seem to fear Joshua or see his own defeat as a routine occurrence. It should make for a good fight with genuine needle which has already manifested itself in accompanying pre-fight friction between the two. Joshua was admittedly raw when they met as amateurs but it won’t change the fact that he’s tasted defeat at the hands of Whyte. I still expect a Joshua win but it’ll make for a different dynamic and hopefully a longer fight and a sterner test for Joshua.

Objectively speaking, some of the hysteria around Anthony Joshua is understandable. While his opponents haven’t turned up to fight, some have promised durability which was considered a test and a gauge for Joshua’s power. Yet he remains a juggernaut regardless of how teak tough the opposition has been billed as. Kevin Johnson went 12 rounds with Vitali Klitschko while Joshua despatched him in two rounds. Admittedly, Johnson’s fight with Klitschko was in 2009 and the former’s punch resistance can be expected to have taken a hit (no pun intended) since. However, power alone doesn’t maketh the boxer.

Cast your minds back a few years and David Price was being afforded a similar status, albeit not to the same lofty heights as is currently given to Joshua, and every opponent became a victim. Still, I recall remarking in the Matt Skelton fight that Price was caught a few times and didn’t react comfortably when in receipt of what seemed like fairly modest shots. That was proven in his subsequent two fights with Tony Thompson and his most recent fight with Erkan Teper. For everything his potent right hand was and probably still is, Price couldn’t take a shot and upon that being realised, mentally he’s not been the same fighter since.

Hopefully that won’t be the case for Joshua. But until we’ve seen he can take a shot, trade in a war and keep his mettle when the pressure is on, we only have one piece of the puzzle that is how complete a fighter Anthony Joshua is. Anthony Joshua could arguably stop any fighter given a clean shot. Nonetheless, in the heavyweight division, where there’s in excess of 200lbs behind a shot, most fighters could. The question is how they respond when taking a shot themselves.

The heavyweight division has always been considered the premier division within the sport. It appeals to our primal desire for gladiatorial battle between the biggest and strongest fighters with the most knockouts and knockdowns anticipated due to the sheer weight behind each punch thrown. Yet in recent years, the division has provided us with a plethora of borefests with so-called fighters who show little conditioning, mettle and athleticism and even less excitement. Every time a new prospect is able to rack up a few consecutive wins via fairly impressive knockouts, they’re therefore touted as a potential future star of the division. Although the desperation for a saviour of heavyweight boxing isn’t new. Indeed, the March 2004 issue of The Ring Magazine gave the cover to Audley Harrison, Dominick Guinn and Joe Mesi with the headline ‘who will replace Lewis, Tyson & Holyfield’.

In contrast to the current crop of heavyweight boxers, Anthony Joshua’s achievements are greatly overstated in a currently largely moribund division. Assuming he is the total package, which I think he will be, there are few heavyweights that wouldn’t be underdogs going into fights with him and even fewer that could overturn their underdog status within the fight. Wladimir Klitschko and a pre-layoff David Haye are probably the only two heavyweight fighters in recent years that many would opine to be able to able to wrest the W from Joshua. Like or loathe him, Tyson Fury would come to fight as would Deontay Wilder. Otherwise, most opponents in the division would probably go the same way as Joshua’s previous opponents. Before his defeat to Erkan Teper, David Price was touted as a potential live opponent for Joshua in a fight that would undoubtedly see someone knocked out (and early) with two huge punchers. Alas, given Price’s confidence is surely at rock bottom, and with the exposure of him seemingly being chinny, he’d likely crumble upon Joshua’s first clean landing shot. As a result, that fight’s now dead in the water.

Joshua needs to bank rounds, experience and credible tests via live opponents on his record before we can place him on the pedestal so many have already hoisted him upon amidst all the fanfare. Hopefully the Dillian Whyte fight will be the first to achieve that with an opponent that doesn’t seem to fear Joshua.

Given time, Johsua certainly has the attributes to eventually fulfil the hype many have accorded him. Boxing just needs to stop getting carried away before time and allow Joshua to build himself as the complete fighter many have prematurely declared him to be.

Life thru an Instagram lens

Recently over dinner with some friends, a mutual acquaintance came up in conversation as we enquired as to whether anyone had made recent contact with them. None of us had, but it quickly became apparent that our only awareness of said acquaintance’s life was through Facebook. We also realised that their posts assumed a very obvious trend of constant and crass humblebrags - casually made statements with the sole intention of really saying 'look how awesome and better than you I am; I'm so awesome that I'm practically nonchalant in telling you about it'. Indeed, most of their posts would be a blatant attempt to suggest that they’re living the most glamourous of lifestyles that are void of the mundane or regularity that most of us experience in our day-to-day lives.

Celebratory posts are an appropriate part of the social media experience and rightly so. After all, those who choose to should be able to upload photos from a great holiday or share news and achievements without it generating unwarranted resentment or disdain. However, this individual would periodically upload selective photos of holiday destinations captioned with a humblebrag that pleads for a comment of envy. Similarly, their attendance at an event or function that might support their purported ‘fabulous life’, would be captured by photos accompanied with cringeworthy captions with the same aim.

Given what I do know of said individual, they aren’t a member of the cast of Made in Chelsea or living a Kardashian-esque life. So one has to assume that their life isn’t the perfection they would have their online audience believe. But that’s just what they’re doing – creating a deliberate and highly selective portrayal of their life, void of any monotonies let alone negativity. And it’s all in the name of creating a character and a life that suggests they’re someone they’re not. What’s more, in an age of social media such depictions often can’t be refuted which is exactly what said individual is banking on. Conversely, those who know differently based on reality, are more likely to think they're just an attention seeking, pretentious braggart.

Such posts certainly aren’t limited to said individual; they’re actually widespread on social networks. They serve only to depict an individual in the way that they feel affords them laudable credibility, drip feeding us nuggets of their alleged lives in the hope that we'll use them to create a picture that they deem desirable. It's akin to an identity makeover that social media permits with the distance it facilitates us from reality and further into the realm of a digital world.

Social media allows users to project an image of themselves that doesn’t necessarily reflect reality. Sometimes that can be to selectively omit facts that we may not want to share with the wider world and there isn’t anything wrong with that. If anything, having some filter on what we project of ourselves online, where once it’s uploaded or posted is eternally in the ether as part of our digital footprint, is advice many social media users could learn from before sharing intimate details with all and sundry. Though that’s very different from creating a persona that’s merely a big lie. Yet the internet allows us to do this and successfully so. The internet has enabled us to negate reality to an extent that hasn’t been possible or with such ease in previous generations. Consequently, the term living a lie (in the online sense) is something that is reality (no pun intended) for many.

Take cyber bullies or trolls hide who behind the internet in the knowledge that their identity is safe and so are they (although as Curtis Woodhouse showed his troll, that isn’t always the case). Or those who choose to catfish others with the opportunity for deceit that the internet affords them. For all the advances that the internet has brought modern society, it’s also brought further opportunity for deception, disingenuousness and reinvention that isn’t mirrored by reality. On the latter, there’s the also the ever-present risk of the portrayals and lifestyles we see online creating a gauge of success that, unbeknownst to us, is a lie - and in most cases untenable.

Considering the human condition and the propensity for individuals to compare themselves to others in society, this also presents concerns within a mental health context. With the constant access and exposure so many of us have to social media, never before have we been faced with images of so-called success with such regularity. And for those who are unable to take what they see on online with a pinch of salt, it can be unsettling for one to feel that their life is below par or inferior in comparison. For the millennials who spend more time on social media than in their interaction with the real world, this surely has a damaging effect on a generation’s self-esteem and self-perception when considered in the context of wider society.

For millennials, the notion of creating their online persona as something they aren’t is an experience that wasn’t shared with generations before. Previously, reinvention for someone in their teens usually came with leaving school or college when they’d have a new and unwitting audience who couldn’t refute the credibility of a personality or backstory due to an ignorance of one’s past. Now, it only takes a new profile, selectively uploaded photos and the creation of an online presence that meets one’s desire for their reinvented self.

The ease and frequency of internet users claiming they’re someone they’re not is a casualty of the progress the internet has provided us. It’s also essentially given rise to a denial culture of who we are with the ability to dismiss any reminders of our identity on a whim, simply because we might not deem it credible to our online audience.

The advent of social media has brought with it a great and welcome opportunity to effortlessly share moments and appropriate aspects of our lives with those we chose to connect with. Births, birthdays, weddings, anniversaries, holiday photos, new jobs and other experiences and life milestones can all be shared using social media with ease. Although that needn't be with a pretentious and ostentatious post with the underlying message of 'I'm better than you or at least that's what I want you to think'. Nor does it need to be with the denial of one’s identity. Otherwise, we risk a society that blurs the lines between reality and the online world more than it already has. Not to mention, it merely promotes the steady erosion of self-worth as reality is eschewed for online reinventions and greatly embellished depictions of life.