26th September, 2021
The Chairperson of the Nigerians in Diaspora Commission, Abike Dabiri-Erewa, has sent a message of encouragement to Anthony Joshua after the Nigerian-British boxer was defeated by Ukraine’s Oleksandr Usyk.
Dabiri-Erewa took to her Instagram page and kept it short and simple.
“Temporary setbacks can’t take winners off their course. AJ will return bigger, better, and stronger,” she noted.
Joshua, who fought Usyk in front of a raucous 68,000 crowd at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium, also lost his IBF, WBA, WBO heavyweight titles to the Ukrainian.
While narrating how Usyk beat him, Anthony Joshua said he saw nothing in the ninth round.
“I couldn’t see in the ninth round. I couldn’t see anything really. But it was a good experience because in adversity you just gotta learn to control yourself. Stay on top of things.
“When I couldn’t see anything, it’s the first time it’s happened in a fight. I was thinking ‘all right, cool…this is the first time my eye’s closed up in a fight. I can’t see anything and I’m looking out of one eye.’ But it got better as the rounds went on.
“We’ll be back 100 (percent). I’m ready to get back to training. Because of the twelve rounds, my lungs and everything, it was a good twelve-rounder so I’ll be in a good place when I get back into training to pick up where we left off.
“He’s got good pace but he still gets hit, you know? He gets hit a lot and in the rematch, we’ll just learn how to hit him more and be more concussive with our punch selection.
“I never tend to look at the opponent. I just tend to look at myself and realize where I went wrong. So it’s not so much what he did, it’s the opportunities I gave him. So it’s not so much him, I’m just going to go back and look at myself and correct my wrongs.”