Dubai: Anthony Joshua will make boxing great again following his epic defeat of Wladimir Klitschko last Saturday, according to former heavyweight world champion Mike Tyson.
The 27-year-old Briton fought back from being floored in the sixth to stop Klitschko with an explosive uppercut in the 11th, becoming the new WBA and IBO heavyweight world champion in front of 90,000 spectators at Wembley in what’s already been called a modern-day classic.
For Tyson, it will bring a fresh impetus to the sport which of late has been dominated by middleweights like Floyd Mayweather and Manny Pacquiao, who put on a bore-fest display in their supposed mega-fight together two years ago.
The current boxing era is a far cry from the days when Tyson burst onto the scene in 1985, winning 26 of his first 28 fights by knockout, 16 of which came in the first round, before he became the youngest world champion just a year later at the age of 20.
But now, he says, things are about to get interesting again.
“That’s about to change now,” he said on the sidelines of the global launch of his academy at the Atlantis The Palm in Dubai on Thursday.
“We have a new heavyweight champion who is pretty exciting and if he continues like this, the sky is the limit for him. When he expulsed like that and won the title the whole game changed.
“All the little guys who have been making money aren’t going to be making money anymore. It will all go to Joshua and the heavyweights. Just that one fight has changed boxing and that’s what fighting needs,” he added.
“Floyd has been making a lot of money with a lot of little guys, but what people want to see is a heavyweight who knows how to fight, like Anthony Joshua. That is what is going to make boxing big again, the heavyweights make boxing big, the other guys just make money but they don’t make the sport big.”
Asked if he misses being part of the action, the 50-year-old who retired in 2005, replied: “No way, I had my turn, did my stuff already, it’s their turn now.”
The Mike Tyson Academy will be headquartered in Las Vegas with multiple franchises planned worldwide, including one in the UAE at a location that is yet to be confirmed. The first gyms are scheduled to open by the end of the year.
Tyson said his gyms would take on the ethos of his legendary former trainer Cus D’Amato, who took Tyson under his wing when the fighter was just 12 and coached him until his death in 1985, sixteen months before Tyson went on to become world champion.
“Diligence, hard work and discipline were the main factors in Cus’ whole barometer of fighting. His definition of discipline is doing what you hate doing and doing it like you love it. Discipline is an important asset in boxing and life in general,” said Tyson, who served almost three years for a rape conviction in 1992.
“In life, we all have to face obstacles we don’t want to face but discipline allows us to be controlled and handle it.”
