Anthony Joshua has admitted to watching Tyson Fury’s Netflix series, in part to gain an insight into his fellow Briton as a potential opponent.
At Home With The Fury’s, which was released this summer, follows the WBC heavyweight champion and his family in Morecambe, and focuses on the 35-year-old’s failed retirement from boxing in 2022.
Fury would ultimately return to the ring in December, beating Derek Chisora for the third time, and he is now due to box former UFC champion Francis Ngannou in Saudi Arabia on 28 October. The “Gypsy King” is then set to face Oleksandr Usyk at an as-yet-unknown date, also in Saudi, to crown an undisputed heavyweight champion.
“I am on episode six, I’m enjoying it,” Joshua said of At Home With The Fury’s, while speaking to Men’s Health this week. “I like it. I like his kids, they’re so funny. His wife is loyal, so supportive.
“I am partly watching it because it gives me an insight that maybe I can use if we do fight. [I’ve seen] how you can change his mood. They say I am mentally weak; he definitely has mental issues.”
Joshua, 33, added that he would “100 per cent” exploit those ‘issues’ if he were preparing to fight Fury. “It’s like going to war,” the former two-time unified champion said.
Joshua dismissed the suggestion that Fury had made a mistake in filming the series, however, saying: “No, in the heat of a fight, you’re not going to be thinking, ‘Ah, that bit in episode seven of the Netflix series…’ but it does give the psychologists a chance to understand him more.
“We separate the elements of a fight. You have the fight strategy, then you have psychological warfare, and then you have things like, ‘Shall I wear red?’ to signal danger – all these different things. So, something like the TV thing won’t help me in the fight, but it might help in the lead-up.”
Joshua, who added that he would be open to doing his own series in the same style, also addressed a scene in At Home With The Fury’s in which a boxing fan approaches Tyson and says that he would lose to “AJ”.
Joshua, right, during his knockout win over Robert Helenius in August— (Nick Potts / PA)
“Yeah, I’ll need to get him some free tickets,” Joshua joked. “I thought Fury handled it really well.”
Fury has said more than once that he wanted to halt the filming of the series at the time.
Joshua last fought in August, stopping Robert Helenius, who stepped in for Dillian Whyte. Whyte, whom Joshua knocked out in 2015, was pulled from their rematch after failing a drug test, while it was revealed after the new match-up that Helenius had also tested positive for a banned substance before the bout.
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