By Brian Webber: Trainer Robert Garcia says Anthony Joshua was “mentally defeated” by the tenth & eleventh rounds in his loss to Oleksandr Usyk last weekend.
Robert says he stopped giving Joshua (24-3, 22 KOs) instructions at that point as he felt he wouldn’t follow them.
Instead, he focused on trying to “motivate” Joshua with words of encouragement, but that failed to work as well.
Garcia points out that Joshua was mentally weaker than IBF, WBA & WBO heavyweight champion Usyk (20-0, 13 KOs), and he was hoping that he could pull out the victory by him landing one big shot.
Joshua emptied his gas tank in the ninth, trying to get Usyk out of there after hurting him with a series of hard punches to the head. If Joshua had a little bit more fuel, he would have finished Usyk in that round.
In the tenth, a motivated Usyk came storming out of the blocks, landing shots from every direction, spraying Joshua with punches.
The blows weren’t heavy from Usyk, but there were so many that he had the exhausted & mentally depleted Joshua in bad shape, seemingly on the verge of a knockout.
“Joshua was mentally defeated since round 10 or 11”, Robert García said to Izquierdazo. “Round 10 was a big one for Usyk. That changed the whole fight, and mentally we were defeated.”
Joshua looked like he wasn’t ready for that kind of energy level from Usyk, and there was no way that he could match him.
If Usyk had stood still, Joshua likely would have gained the upper hand once again, but he was all over the place, moving here and there.
“That is what we were hoping for, one shot because he [Joshua] was dominated at that point of the fight,” said Robert.
“Usyk came back stronger in the tenth round, and that changed the fight. I have even thought in these last few days that it was Anthony Joshua who mentally defeated himself,” said Garcia.
The only way Joshua could have knocked out Usyk is if he backed up against the ropes and became immobile, but that’s not how he fights. As such, Joshua was throwing wild bombs and missing by a mile most of the time.
“I think that Anthony’s mind is a bit weaker than Usyk’s, because instead of going out stronger, his mind and exhaustion play games with him,” said Garcia.
