Anthony Joshua interview: Critics of Jake Paul fight ‘need to understand me. I don’t need to understand them’

It all started on WhatsApp.

When Anthony Joshua’s phone lit up, alerting him to the arrival of a new message, he had little idea the impact reading it would have on the rest of his 2025. At that time, he was preparing to make his return to the ring after more than a year out since his last fight — a disastrous fifth-round knockout by fellow British heavyweight Daniel Dubois in September 2024 — on the undercard of a fight between David Benavidez and Anthony Yarde in Saudi Arabia.

“My whole purpose was to fight in Saudi and be understated,” says the 36-year-old, speaking via Zoom from Miami, Florida, where he has been acclimatising before Friday’s bout against YouTuber Jake Paul, 28. “Don’t do the press conference. Don’t do the weigh-in. Just turn up. The Saudis run the show and said, ‘Yeah, you can just turn up and we’ll announce you on the day of the fight.’ I was like, ‘Perfect. I don’t want to do any media. I don’t want to do any build-up. I just want to turn up’.”

But then Paul’s WhatsApp message hit his phone. “I was like, ‘That’s sick. What an opportunity’. I just knew it was going to be big. So I thought, ‘Scrap my ideas, the universe wants me to do something bigger here’.”

There’s a hint of a chuckle in Joshua’s voice as he says all this — well aware that in signing the contract to fight Paul (who has 28 million Instagram followers, and four million on X), he chose a path completely at odds with that initial plan. He has instead entered a world where “understated” does not exist. Where media hype is everything and where he is expected to play a key role in adding to it.

As a two-time heavyweight world champion and Olympic gold medalist with 32 professional fights on his record, Joshua’s decision to accept the advances of a fighter who has fought 13 times as a professional against a mixture of YouTubers, athletes from other sports and ageing or retired fighters, attracted plenty of criticism. He’s been accused of helping to undermine the legitimacy of boxing as a sport and damaging his own legacy within it.

Joshua defeated Wladimir Klitschko in 2017 to become world champion (Richard Heathcote/Getty Images)

Asked whether he can understand that criticism, Joshua says firmly: “No. They need to understand me. I don’t need to understand them. They need to come and sit down with me and listen to me.”

If that were to happen, his critics would hear Joshua lean heavily on the word “opportunity” to explain his reasons for accepting this fight. It applies on various levels: for example, the opportunity to spend more time in camp before getting back in the ring (the original card in Saudi Arabia was to be on November 22, around four weeks earlier than the Paul fight).

“I haven’t slowed down my training because it’s Jake Paul,” says Joshua, who joined forces with the training team of heavyweight world champion Oleksandr Usyk earlier this year. “It’s been an actual training camp. We’re not training for Jake Paul, we’re training to beat whoever’s in the future. So from an ability point of view, I’ve definitely pushed myself.”

It’s also an opportunity to put on the gloves again and go through the fight-night emotions while facing far less risk than most comeback opponents would present, and of course, an opportunity to make a lot of money (the second-biggest payday of his career, according to promoter Eddie Hearn), for what many believe will be one of his easiest nights’ work.

Whatever critics might say of Paul as a boxer, few can deny his global reach, and Joshua says that also impacted his decision; he sees it as an opportunity to grow his own “marketability”.

“I’m either going to do it when I’m 60 or I’m going to do it now,” he says. “Mike Tyson came out of his bed at 60 to do all this stuff. I thought to myself, ‘Don’t wait ’til you’re 60. You might as well do it now.’ I’m just ahead of the game.”

Joshua says he has been watching Paul’s previous fights every day and has noted the things he does well: “Stands really side-on. Quite hard to hit with a one-two. Uses his lead hand pretty well. Got a good jab and a good overhand right. He has good conditioning — does the eight rounds well — and he’s fearless. He hasn’t had any trauma yet. It’s like when you have a car crash or get out of a bad relationship, you’re quite hesitant to experience that same trauma again. He hasn’t had that yet, so he’s a bit fearless. I’m gonna be that bad boyfriend that’s going to come and give him hell.”

If that all sounds a bit WWE, it’s worth remembering that this is a sanctioned professional fight, scheduled for eight three-minute rounds. It will be Paul’s first time fighting an active heavyweight and both men will be wearing 10oz (just under 300 grams) gloves, unlike his meeting with Tyson in November last year when they had 14oz ones, meaning there was more padding, increasing safety levels and reducing injury risk. Each of that fight’s eight rounds also lasted only two minutes.

Given the differences in experience, the levels at which they have been operating, and simple size — Joshua’s contract stipulates he cannot weigh in any heavier than 245lbs (17st, 7lb; 111kg), but even that will likely put him around 20lbs heavier than Paul, who he is also around five inches/13cm shorter than his 6ft 6in/198cm — there are serious questions to be asked about the safety of this match-up.

Paul vs Joshua is in the U.S. city of Miami on Friday (Leonardo Fernandez/Getty Images)

Perhaps predictably, Joshua says he has “no concerns at all” in that regard, and certainly won’t have any urge (conscious or not) to trim a few watts off the immense power in his punches: “None. I understand where you’re coming from,” he says, “but there’s none.”

Joshua says he considers Paul to be a professional boxer (“We’re used to the traditional route — (fighting as) amateurs then pros. So it’s like he skipped the amateur system. But he’s doing it his way. He’s created his own lane”) but understands the pressure on him to make short work of the man who’ll be in the opposite corner on Friday night.

“I hear them,” he says of those who say anything other than an early stoppage by Joshua is a disaster for him. “I get it and I acknowledge it and I agree with them, but I haven’t looked at it and thought, ‘I need to finish in round one’. I need to do my best, I need to win. But I do understand that I need to dispatch him in a good fashion for the boxing purists. I understand what my job is.”

Those purists aside, Joshua needs a strong display if he’s to achieve his stated ambition in 2026 of returning to fight at the top level, potentially against fellow Brit and fellow former world champion Tyson Fury. His experiences with Usyk’s team have been so positive that he says they will be the ones to take him forward in his career, beyond the Paul show.

“In terms of, do they tell me to jab differently, do they tell me to hook differently? Not necessarily, but it’s the way they operate. Everyone talks as a collective and works together, whether it’s your nutritionist, your physio… It’s not like I’m going down to the Thai shop on the high street to get a massage and she doesn’t have a clue what I’ve done (in training) that day. Everyone’s in-house. So there’s a method to the madness and you trust what everyone brings to the table.

“I haven’t got that many years ahead of me. I could go on for another four, five years if I want to, but I doubt it. So let’s say I don’t (do that). This is the team I’ve got to stay with. I don’t think I’m going to get better anywhere else. These guys are really elite.”

Friday night will be their first outing in Joshua’s corner, with all the expectation of a swift finish in their man’s favour — something he’s understandably confident of fulfilling.

“If he thinks he’s going to show me how good he is, I’m going to show you how great I am,” promises Joshua. “That’s the difference. I’m not there to lie down, I’m there to compete.”