Maybe Anthony Joshua is still suffering from the effects of being flattened.
Perhaps he isn’t thinking straight, having been punched in the face so often. Or it might be just the simple case that Joshua doesn’t want one of the last things he hears in a boxing ring to be the sound of alarm bells. Not to mention the national anthem of Saudi Arabia.
But whatever the insane reasons are for Joshua wanting to continue fighting, they will be the wrong ones. Knowing when to quit top level sport is one of the most difficult things athletes like him struggle to work out.
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It’s a big decision, especially when that sport has been your whole life, and there has been little else to focus on. But the harsh truth, one he will not want to admit or even contemplate, is that Joshua is now a has been.
He used to be someone. He was heavyweight champion of the world. He earned lots of money, got lots of adulation and respect and felt like he ruled the world he lived in.
(Image: Getty Images)
He had the potential to go on to become one of the true greats. Instead, he won’t even be remembered as Britain’s best ever boxer, because that title belongs to Lennox Lewis. Joshua isn’t even in the top three.
Last weekend’s crushing defeat to Daniel Dubois reduced him to rubble, leaving the giant humbled, embarrassed and humiliated. Joshua remains defiant, however.
He said: “We came up short, but we have got to look at all the positives and that’s the mindset that we have to have – a positive one. Look at what we’ve achieved in the space of 11 years. What a rollercoaster journey. But you know what the problem is, is that it’s far from over, yet.”
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And for Joshua, he’s right, because this is a problem. You’ve got to admire his heart, it has to be said. And he’s entitled to his opinion about what the future could still hold. It’s called freedom of expression.
One of the everlasting qualities and rights of the civilised world, yet something the Saudi’s trampled all over in London when allegedly preventing one journalist from covering the fight at Wembley because he’d written something negative about the despot State.
Yet Joshua’s greatest crime isn’t jumping into bed with a Saudi nation which sticks two fingers up to basic human rights, or takes sportswashing to shameless levels. It is to even think about continuing boxing at the age of 34.
(Image: Getty Images)
It takes one punch to leave a fighter brain damaged or even dead. Just ask Michael Watson or Gerald McClellan. So why risk that when you don’t have to, when time is not your friend, but is telling you to hang up the gloves instead?
Having been knocked down in the first round, Joshua resorted to kidology in a bid to remain relevant in the fight. So we had the pitiful sight of Joshua sticking out his tongue at Dubois.
But the only person Joshua is kidding is himself. And if his promoter, Eddie Hearn, had anything about him, he would be putting common sense before cash and telling Joshua to retire.