British heavyweight stars Lennox Lewis and Anthony Joshua share the fact that they have both taken losses in the ring.
In Lewis’s case, both of his defeats were surprises against betting underdogs Oliver McCall and Hasim Rahman, and both resulted in him being knocked out. However, these were also later avenge with knockout wins of his own, and so Lewis retried having defeated all of the men he faced in the ring.
He was of course a decorated former undisputed champion who also beat the likes of fellow legends Frank Bruno, Mike Tyson and Evander Holyfield.
For Joshua, he too has suffered an upset loss. His came at the fists of Andy Ruiz Jr in 2019 in Madison Square Garden in New York but was avenged with a wide points win six months later.
He has also taken back-to-back losses against Oleksandr Usyk, though no man has yet managed to solve that problem and Usyk is now a two-weight undisputed ruler.
AJ’s last outing in September also ended in defeat, this time to Daniel Dubois who put on the performance of his career to win by knockout in the fifth round and retain his IBF world title.
Lewis was asked by BoxNation whether or not Joshua should take the immediate rematch he initially spoke of.
“No I don’t think he should take the rematch. I think he should take a rest for a minute and then come back.”
‘The Lion’ was then asked if we have now seen the best of ‘AJ’ and in his opinion and we have, citing that his standout performance came back in 2016 when he beat Wladimir Klitschko.
“It seems so. My best of Anthony Joshua was definitely the Klitschko fight. He boxed well, came from off the floor, showed great heart. So, yeah.”
Joshua had been expected to go into the immediate rematch with Dubois, but that has now been ruled out leaving ‘DDD’ searching for his next opponent.
