Four-belt world heavyweight champion knows he must be on his ‘A game’ at Wembley on Saturday against the Russian challenger
The prospect of defeat simultaneously excites and frightens Anthony Joshua, as it does most boxers. But it is different for heavyweights, where uncertainty is built into every punch, and the unbeaten four-belt world champion knows that at Wembley Stadium on Saturday night Alexander Povetkin will provide the biggest threat to his dominance since Wladimir Klitschko knocked him down in the same ring 18 months ago.
The Ukrainian had not long turned 42, at the end of a decade of hegemony shared intermittently with his older brother, Vitali. Joshua’s Russian challenger is 39 and the champion, a mere 28, acknowledges he is “the second hardest” opponent of his career after Klitschko, the only fighter to beat Povetkin. There is much at stake. Joshua, whose last four fights have been in front of 300,000 fans in the nation’s two biggest football stadiums – numbers that were unimaginable for even the sport’s most decorated champions of the past – is the No 1 individual box-office draw in the history of British sport. Nobody comes close.
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