Joshua, 26, insists he is not lacking experience compared to southpaw Martin, 29, but is not dismissing the danger of the champion, who only took up boxing ten years ago while working on a construction site in Phoenix.
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Martin embraced that challenge, flew to England this week and met Joshua face-to-face at a London news conference on Thursday to promote their showdown, which will take place on April 9 at the O2 Arena, which sold out in minutes.
LONDON (AP) – Anthony Joshua has the Olympic gold medal, the enviable physique, a growing aura and the ideal professional record.
Fury was stripped of the IBF belt because he is contractually obliged to hand Wladimir Klitschko a rematch and was therefore unable to make a mandatory defence against Vyacheslav Glazkov.
Anthony Joshua is big box office in this neck of the woods and were expecting to see the TV viewing figures and ticket sales records smashed for this fight. You see him with his diamonds, his jewellery. That shift couldn’t come soon enough for a chronically distracted fighter who’s seemingly thinking as much about campaigning for a senatorial election May 9 in the Philippines as much as his third fight against Bradley (33-1-1, 13 KOs, 1 NC) four weeks earlier in Las Vegas.
“I told my Team I wanted the best challenger possible for my first defence and Anthony Joshua’s name kept coming up”, he said.
“Me and Charles Martin are two big guys, both undefeated”.
“I think he’s too smart for his own good”. He has got it. When we look at technical skills and that, I have got one up on him and that is why I will be victorious.
He said: “I’m going to say I know I can touch his chin, I know I can test it, I know I can knock him out”.
Martin, a California-based boxer from St. Louis, is also unbeaten – winning 23 of his 24 fights and drawing the other – but he isn’t a major name in the boxing world. Yet. “I feel privileged to have the opportunity to turn that dream in to reality”. ‘I let these talk for me. “It won’t go 12 rounds, heavyweights aren’t supposed to go 12 rounds”.
“He has got the belt, and you have to respect he is the champion and I am the underdog”.
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“I want what he’s got – the praise, the attention, and the fans”, Martin said of Joshua on Friday. I will return to the U.K.in April in phenomenal shape, ready for battle. It’s exactly the same now, and I go into this fight with the same attitude and the same goal – to win.
