"The bullsh*t that they sold to boxers" - Anthony Joshua's former trainer Don Charles rips into "lazy coaching" by his current team
Anthony Joshua's ex-coach Don Charles recently bashed Joshua's current team and blamed them for the Brit's poor performance against Daniel Dubois. According to Charles, Joshua's team spent the entire training camp focused on one method and ignoring many other aspects of boxing.
Joshua struggled against Dubois during their IBF heavyweight title fight. The 34-year-old faced challenges from the beginning as he was dropped in the opening round and wobbled many times throughout the fight before losing to a counter right hook in the fifth round.
Notably, Dubois consistently outboxed Joshua, landing several jabs on the two-time world heavyweight champion. In a recent interview with Seconds Out, Charles criticized Joshua's team for focusing solely on the boxer's right hand technique and not enough on his defense against his opponent's jabs.
He said:
''That's what they've [Joshua's team] been working on, hit him with a right hand and you knock him out. They're right, Joshua hits anyone with a right hand, he usually knocks them out. But they've spent a whole Camp practicing on right hands, there's a lot of other shots there are in the boxing that you need to also work on. There's something called defense, how to defend a jab. You need to work out.''
Charles added:
''I'm not a bitter man, there's a lot of anger when I hear the bullsh*t that's been sold to boxers, that's lazy coaching.''
Check out Don Charles' comments below (23:08):
Following the fight, during the press conference, Joshua's coach Ben Davison pointed out that countering Dubois was meant to be a significant element of Joshua's game plan, but 'AJ' failed to execute it.
''Yeah, we knew Dubois, he returns all the time when you jab, so that was something we were looking to capitalize on. For whatever reason things didn't get going as we'd like to in the early part of the fight.''
Check out Ben Davison's comments below:
Lennox Lewis highlights the fault in Anthony Joshua's gameplan
Just like Anthony Joshua's former coach Don Charles, the former undisputed heavyweight champion Lennox Lewis stated that Joshua was not defensively aware during his title fight against Daniel Dubois.
Lewis felt that Joshua leaving his chin exposed is what led to his knockout. During a TNT Sports broadcast following the fight, 'The Lion' said:
'''AJ' did come out even with his chin up a little bit, and I was like uhh, you need to put that chin down, because, against a right-handed boxer where he's been throwing right hands and knocking out people all the time, that's just opening the door for him by keeping your chin up.''
Check out Lennox Lewis' comments below (2:05):