Anthony Joshua admits he needed time to decide if he wanted to carry on boxing after his knockout defeat to Daniel Dubois in 2024. The answer? He does.
The two-time heavyweight world champion marked his return to the ring with a sixth-round knockout victory over YouTuber-turned-boxer Jake Paul in Miami on Friday night.
Joshua immediately followed up the win by reiterating his desire to fight Tyson Fury in a long-awaited all-British showdown.
"I had a tough defeat in 2024 and I just want to pick up and move forward again," said Joshua. "So yeah, I'm glad that I got back in the ring and I figured out that this is where I want to be.
"It was a real test for me to figure out if I still want to continue or not, and this was a good eye-opener that this is where I want to be, that I want to get back in the ring and go again."
Joshua's return was unorthodox, a bout between him and Paul emerging as one of the most controversial in the era of crossover clashes.
Nonetheless, Paul barely laid a glove on the former Olympic champion before suffering a double jaw-break from Joshua's devastating finish.
"I needed to do better. I needed to do better," said Joshua after the fight. "Yeah, it's a win, but it's not a success. I think my coach expects more from me, and I expect more from myself.
"But what can we do? We can't reverse the clocks. I have to move forward. I have to put that in the past now.
"After today, you may see a bit of social media trying to lap up all of the algorithm attention, but for me, it's in the past. I can't live off of that win. I've got a lot of improvement I need to do. So, yeah, I'm not happy."
During the build-up to the fight Joshua had willingly accepted a responsibility to represent the sport of boxing while seeking to end the 'Jake Paul Show', the social media sensation having fought both Mike Tyson and Julio César Chávez Jr. in his previous two fights.
"There was a lot riding on this fight. A lot of pressure, a lot of expectations, so I had to perform," he said. "A lot of people doubt me. I saw (WBC President) Mauricio Sulaiman put a picture up of Jake, he don't put a picture up of me.
"A lot of people don't respect me so there's a lot of pressure, and I had boxing on my back, and that was what it was really, I took Jake as serious as I needed to, but most importantly, I take myself as serious as I need to. I respect myself, I respect boxing."
Joshua's next steps had been unclear and uncertain after he was sensationally stopped by Dubois in the fifth round of a thrilling fight at Tottenham. It would take the following 12 months to reset and regroup in view of his next target, notably working with Oleksandr Usyk's team ahead of his fight with Paul.
"I was trying to fall back in love with boxing," he said. If you're a family man, I realised that I was working away from home, I had to kind of look up the decisions I was making, and I had to come back home to boxing, and I had to sacrifice. I had to take a look at my life, make necessary changes to put my love back to the sport.
"This sport is unforgiving, if you don't give 100 per cent attention, those belts will be torn away from you and be put on someone else's waist, who gives it a love and attention that boxing needs - and I wasn't giving it enough love and attention.
"It wasn't that I stepped away because I didn't want to fight, I stepped away because I knew if I'm going to be in boxing, I need to be 100 per cent and that's what it was.
"I gave myself a year. I said, 'I'm going to give myself a year' and on September 21, 2025 the year was done. We normally do a 12-week training camp, September 21, October 21, November 21, December 19 - three months of training, and we get straight back in the ring.
"For me, it was a perfect plan, and I don't want to start losing my focus now and go and start socialising, and let's get lit, you're popping right now."
