Anthony Joshua credits new fight IQ for ‘quick’ Francis Ngannou win

After a tough stretch that saw Anthony Joshua lose his heavyweight boxing belts to Andy Ruiz Jr. and drop two decisions to Oleksandr Usyk, “A.J.” is looking back in top form with four wins in a row. His next challenge comes from Daniel Dubois on September 21st, and Joshua is feeling confident because he’s put the work into rebuilding himself from the ground up following those losses.

“You always believe in yourself, but it’s hard when people stop believing in you as well,” he said in a new interview with DAZN. “You have, like, an over-pressure from people saying that you’re not that same person anymore, so you go back and rebuild.”

“I went through that rebuilding process. And, if you look at the consistency, I’m not saying I’ve beaten world champion after world champion, but in order to get to the world championships, I’ve had to take steps. And each fight has led me here. Each fight has been a good progression: from going 12 rounds with Franklin, 7 with Helenius, down to 5 with Wallin, then to 2 with Ngannou.”

Joshua credits his easy second round KO win over Francis Ngannou back in March to working smarter.

“I look at the Ngannou fight — the guy was a juggernaut, he was massive,” he said. “And I thought to myself, ‘If I only depended on strength it would have been a lot tougher fight.’ But due to the fact that I’ve gone through a process where I’ve tried to improve my IQ, I was able to dispatch a Goliath in quick fashion.”

“I’m not saying he was an elite boxer, but I took it on the premise of what he did versus Tyson Fury, who was the WBC champion. He gave Fury one of his toughest nights in the ring. So I thought this guy, he knows what he’s doing. And due to the fact that I went away and I studied, I learned some different tricks. I was able to dispatch of him in two rounds when the WBC heavyweight world champion Tyson Fury struggled to take him in ten rounds.”

At 34 years old, “A.J.” believes he’s only getting better.

“Yeah, the best is always gonna be yet to come,” he said. “To me as a boxer, as I am giving a service to my fans, I’m giving a service to the sport. I should never sit back and be like, ‘Yeah. I’m the best I can be. I always got to look at myself and sit down on my team. How can we make this better? So yeah, I try and improve in every in every aspect.”

He’ll have a chance to show off his latest improvements in Wembley Stadium against Daniel Dubois on September 21st, in front of a record crowd of 96,000 fans.