Anthony Joshua interview: I did not write Black Lives Matter speech

Simon BriggsThu, October 1, 2026 at 5:01 PM UTC

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Anthony Joshua, pictured in June 2020, spoke during a Black Lives Matter protest in Watford following the death of George Floyd - Reuters/Paul Childs

In a backstage room at Kensington’s Olympia, Anthony Joshua is sprawled in an armchair, expounding his philosophy of life. “I am a man of integrity and I respect all, no matter what race, religion or colour you are,” he explains. “If you are a pr--- then you’re a pr--- and if you’re a good person you’re a good person.”

Dressed in a grey tracksuit and sunglasses, Joshua fills this small dressing-room with his colossal physique – which even Tyson Fury calls Adonis-like – and his booming laugh. He is in expansive mood too, reminiscing with the assembled reporters about how “I was in my 20s when I first met a lot of you guys”.

And yet, while Joshua is too much of an Alpha male to admit it, he is actually engaged in a little light damage limitation. A month ago, amid a series of provocative social-media call-outs, Fury reshared the video of Joshua’s inflammatory speech at a protest march in Watford in June 2020.

The speech, which dates back to the Black Lives Matter movement after George Floyd’s death, called on Watford’s black community to “inject the vaccine” against the sickness of racism. To do this, Joshua suggested that his audience should “abstain from spending your money in their [white people’s] shops and in economies and invest in black-owned businesses”.

Now, he says that he did not actually write the speech himself.

“I think people took it in the wrong context,” Joshua explains. “It could come across as light versus dark and I was presented in a dark fashion, basically saying ‘divide people’.

“At the time, in the park, I definitely thought what happened to George Floyd was wrong. I joined the rally and, at the time, a lot was expected of me. I read a speech that was written by somebody else and, as I was reading it, I was realising what I was saying.”

Fury captioned the video with the sarcastic words “This is the man who loves England”, and then pointed out that Joshua recently changed his corporate address to the tax haven of Dubai.

Before a fight that has been subtitled “The Battle of Britain”, such attacks carry a certain resonance. Yet Joshua insists that he will not be responding in kind. Or, at least, that he maintains a higher moral standard.

“A lot of these things are used to try to demonise your character, to a degree,” he muses. “And in boxing it’s an open playing field, you can do and say whatever you want. He is able to and I could do the same to him. But he just chose to go as low as that. So be it. I will take it with a pinch of salt.

“He’ll be trying to get under my skin, 100 per cent. I need to be stoic and calm. It’s nothing personal. I know what sort of person he is. It doesn’t matter what he says. I won’t be friendly because he’s friendly or rude because he’s rude. I will be stoic in my approach because I know that this is a fight.”

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Joshua was in a good mood in his first press conference with Tyson Fury - Getty Images/Richard Pelham

Whether this is true will become clear soon enough. After Wednesday’s official launch party in west London, 11 weeks remain until fight night on December 11: plenty of time for taunts, jibes, and general s---housery.

While Joshua is usually more understated on this front than the ever-confrontational Fury, he has already highlighted his opponent’s late enrollment in the VADA anti-doping programme, while also casually claiming to be in regular contact with Peter Fury, Tyson’s estranged uncle and former trainer. Do such manoeuvres not come under the general heading of “pre-fight mind games”?

Judging by fan reactions in Olympia on Wednesday night, Joshua will have the greater support inside Cardiff’s Principality Stadium, where a large crowd is expected despite the US-friendly start time of 2am.

One suspects that this would be true even if he had not insisted that the fight be held in the UK, despite a personal cost that – according to Eddie Hearn, his manager, exceeds £10m in extra taxes. But that certainly helps.

Asked why he was so implacable on this point, Joshua offers an unexpected answer. “I hold myself in a certain regard and I looked at boxing and saw that Americans don’t really respect us,” he replies. “I realised that I would be fighting these guys but that they didn’t respect us. So I wanted to bring a bit of integrity back to heavyweight boxing. I brought Charles Martin over and then [Wladimir] Klitschko. I have stood on those principles from the beginning.

“I don’t need to go to America to get more money, because the UK has been a blessing to me. We stood firm and I know in barbershops and family homes and in pubs, people have had arguments and fights over who is going to win. It’s been a big debate for years so to have it here meant a lot.”

Joshua and Fury will fight in Cardiff on December 11 - Getty Images/Adrian Dennis

As you can see, this was a beatific and peaceful Joshua who held court at Olympia. It was an appropriate venue for a man with a statuesque build. As Fury wisecracked on Wednesday: “This guy is carved in stone like an Olympian … I’m built like a blancmange.”

But there was one moment when we saw a flash of temper from Joshua. As so often in the never-ending soap opera surrounding this fight, the boxers seem more comfortable discussing each other than they do talking about the promoters.

In the latest instance, Joshua agreed with a question about whether Turki Al-Sheikh and his Saudi Arabian entourage – who are putting up the estimated £200m purse – would prefer him to lose the fight.

“I believe that, yeah,” he replied, before turning the dial down on his geniality for the first and only time. “I want to do good but if someone hits you, you stab them. If you f--- with me and you want to see me lose, I will f--- you up even more.

“It’s like that now. I want to do good, I want to bring it to the UK and do good for people and do the right thing. But if that means that people will then hate me, and want to see me fail, then I am going to stomp all over you and raise a war that you are not ready for. That’s just how it is. That’s just my mentality. Now it’s just ‘f--- everyone’ and that’s just it.”

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Source: “AOL Entertainment”