By Charles Brun: Anthony Joshua’s new trainer Robert Garcia believes he can rebuild his self-confidence & love for the sport to help him avenge his loss to Oleksandr Usyk on August 20th.
Robert blames Joshua’s recent defeat against Usyk on a combination of factors, starting with a faulty game plan from his previous coach Robert McCracken.
Interestingly, instead of Garcia putting the blame on Joshua for lacking the chin, stamina & self-confidence needed to beat Usyk, he says AJ’s loss was because he no longer believed in his team. In other words, McCracken gets the blame for Joshua’s ineptitude.
Joshua (24-2, 22 KOs) tried to outbox a boxer like he’d done against the grossly overweight Andy Ruiz Jr. in December 2019. It was obvious going into the theUsyk fight that it was Joshua who wanted to box, and he was going to try regardless of how many people thought it was a crazy idea.
Unlike Ruiz, Usyk wasn’t overweight, and he easily defeated Joshua by a fight that appeared to be more one-sided than the scores handed down by the three judges that worked the contest in London, England.
Robert Garcia has been transparent about what he plans on doing with Joshua, saying he wants him to use his size, power, and reach to overpower the smaller 6’3″ Usyk (19-0, 13 KOs) to win back his IBF, WBA & WBO heavyweight titles.
Usyk easily figured out what Joshua was trying to do in the first round last September, and schooled him with his vastly superior boxing skills. He made Joshua look like an oaf at times, and the only rounds he lost were when he eased off the throttle in the middle of the fight.
“I think in his last few fights, it was about him not believing in his team anymore, his head trainer at that time, or him losing a bit of the love for the sport,” said new trainer Robert Garcia to iFL TV about his theory on why Anthony Joshua has struggled since 2019.
“That was my question on what happened with Anthony Joshua. I think we need to bring back with Anthony to will to be a superstar again, the will to go out and hurt people and go in there without fear.”
Robert’s game plan for the rematch will be for Joshua to press and use his size on Usyk. In other words, it’ll be the game plan that AJ should have used the first time around against Usyk.
Unfortunately, that’s not likely to work against the talented former undisputed cruiserweight champion. Joshua’s muscles are going tired out quickly after six rounds, and he’s going to be at the mercy of the better-conditioned Usyk from that point on.
“Maybe he lost belief in himself, but that’s what we’re here for. Definitely,” said Robert when asked if it was the wrong idea for Joshua to box Usyk instead of using his size & power last September.
“When you have somebody that is a lot smaller than you and you have the weight, the size, the power, the reach advantage, then take advantage of it. It seems like they [Team Joshua] had a different game plan. I don’t even want to say it was a game plan.
“Joshua is a person that listens to his corner and did what he was told, and it was totally wrong. The way it looks now, he’s listening to us. We have our meetings with him.
“He’s happy that we’re working together, he’s hungry again and he’s told us, ‘I want to do it for myself and I also want to do it for you two as well,” said Robert about what Joshua told him and Angel Fernandez.
“Anthony already knows what we want him to do because we already did all the months of training camp,” said Robert.
