WBA, IBF & WBO World Heavyweight Champion Anthony Joshua has sent a firm warning in the direction of upcoming challenger Andy Ruiz.
Joshua was scheduled to face Jarrell Miller – until the unbeaten Miller tested positive for performance enhancing drugs and was pulled from the fight. Then a deal was reached with Ruiz to step in.
Joshua will make his United States debut this coming Saturday night, against Ruiz, at Madison Square Garden in New York City.
In the weeks leading up to this fight, Ruiz has called Joshua a “robot” and also said the unified champ had a lot of weaknesses that he could exploit.
“I heard him say that! I’m going to smack him up now!” Joshua said to Boxing News. “It’s like in the [Alexander] Povetkin fight [in September last year]. When he hit me, I thought to myself, ‘I’m going to f*** you up now.’ Because he didn’t speak English, he didn’t trash-talk too much before the fight, so I respected him. But when you’re in there, you take the fight as it comes.
“Miller was going to get peppered – straight up. If Ruiz wants to go down that route of talking sh*t too, then I’m gonna want to break his jaw and hurt him really bad. But if he wants a good boxing match and he gets hit with a shot he didn’t see, and we shake hands after, then it’s best not to say anything.”
Joshua would rather tone down the trash talking with his opponents. He prefers to let his fists do the talking in the ring.
“Like [Wladimir] Klitschko and Povetkin,” Joshua said. “I come from that amateur background where you fight the best and respect the best. Miller comes more from that gritty gym background where it’s all trash talk. You’ve got to talk and talk. In amateur boxing, it doesn’t really matter what you say. The medals, the accolades, the fights show what you’re about.
“Look at [Vasyl] Lomachenko. He doesn’t have to say too much. You just respect him as a fighter and that’s the background I was introduced to. I like that. And Klitschko was the same – an Olympian. Povetkin is the same, too. I’m more down that route and those are the kind of fighters I respect.”
–boxingscene
