Grounded boxing star Anthony Joshua has moved back into his mother’s two-bed ex-council flat despite earning an estimated £15million from defeating Wladimir Klitschko.
The 27-year-old boxer was living in a grand palladian villa in affluent St John’s Wood, rented as a haven so he could focus on the biggest fight of his life.
After defeating Ukrainian Klitschko on an extraordinary night at Wembley last month experts said that Mr Joshua could soon be the world’s first billionaire boxer.
But despite the riches on offer the star is back living his mother Yeta Odusanya, 51, and his 𝚋𝚊𝚋𝚢 son after several gruelling months away from home.
The father-of-one bought her the a former council flat in North London for £174,000 after turning professional in 2013, and was pictured moving back in yesterday.
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Grounded boxing star Anthony Joshua has moved back into his mother’s two-bed ex-council flat (pictured there yesterday) despite earning an estimated £15million from defeating Wladimir Klitschko
Despite the riches on offer the star is back living his mother Yeta Odusanya, 51, (pictured yesterday) and his 𝚋𝚊𝚋𝚢 son after several gruelling months away from home
During a round of press interviews after beating Klitschko, Joshua smiled fondly as he spoke of the moment his care worker mother – who he banned from watching the fight ringside – told him she was proud of his incredible triumph in front of 90,000 spectators at Wembley.
He said: ‘We spoke on Facetime and she said she was proud of me.’
For the past decade, he has been in an on/off relationship with the mother of his child, former school friend Nicole Osbourne, who he bought a £500,000 flat not far from his home.
Though the 6ft 6in and 17 stone star is currently single, there is however one woman that will come before any others – his mother.
Supportive: Joshua has previously credited the close-relationship with Mrs Odusanya as being key to his rapid rise from amateur to becoming a boxing superstar
He has previously credited the close-relationship with Mrs Odusanya as being key to his rapid rise from amateur to becoming a boxing superstar – having now claimed the WBA, IBF, and IBO heavyweight titles.
But he is so fiercely protective that since winning Olympic gold at London 2012 he has not let her watch his fights, be it live or even on TV.
Mrs Odusanya was asked if she was proud of him last month and she simply gave a double thumbs up and a big grin before climbing into the £80,000 white Range Rover he had bought her.
Despite earning roughly £15million for the fight, Joshua told a press conference that all he wanted to do following the fight was to go back to ‘normal living’ by having a lie-in and catching up with family members.
Asked what his plans were he told reporters: ‘I’m a good man, I’m a family man, and I love life.
‘How do I plan to celebrate? Wake up midday for once. Wake up midday and then catch up with my family.
Home is a tiny former council flat in Golders Green, North London, which Anthony co-owns with his mother, Yeta Odusanya
The gruelling fight with Wladimir Klitschko won him a £15m purse and he is now tipped to one day overshadow the £540m fortune of Floyd Mayweather
Anthony Joshua said his son ‘loves the shiner’, under his left eye, that he sustained in the fight. Pictured, Joshua holds the IBO, IBF and WBA world heavyweight titles
‘Normally I take a holiday, but I think this time what I’m going to do is just pop round to some of my family’s house and catch up.
‘Because we spend quarter of the year training, and then normally you go on holiday and then straight back into training camp. I don’t want to do that, I want to catch up with family. And that’s it. Go back to normal living.’
One of four children, Joshua grew up on the Meridean Estate in Watford and left school aged 16 after falling in with the wrong crowd.
Two years later he was a jobbing bricklayer devoting weekends to drinking and going out clubbing.
But it was aged 18 that he became ‘hooked’ on boxing at Finchley Boxing Club which later led him to clearing up his act and winning Olympic gold at London 2012.
Heavyweight boxer Anthony Joshua’s mother’s council flat in Finchley, North London
The 27-year-old boxer was living in a grand palladian villa in affluent St John’s Wood, rented as a haven so he could focus on the biggest fight of his life
Naturally, the villa came with a gym fit for a king
One of the villa’s many luxurious bedrooms
The £86,000-a-month rented mansion includes a large mirrored dressing room
One of the villa’s luxurious bathrooms, which includes a walk-in shower
One of the villa’s spacious living rooms, which has a widescreen TV and plush sofas
The villa pictured by night
In October 2015, his then girlfriend Nicole Osbourne, who works as a dance teacher and appears in pole-dancing videos on YouTube, gave birth to their son Joseph.
Living just two miles away, he visits regularly when he is living at home with his devoted mother.
Last month, Mrs Odusanya said: ‘We’re very close, we always have been from day one, he’s my only son.
‘We live together and he’s always looking out for me. I still can’t watch his fights, I get really nervous and I do worry about him.’
Anthony is fiercely protective of Yeta, a petite 51-year-old social worker, who came to the UK from Nigeria in the Eighties
At 18, Anthony was a jobbing bricklayer devoting weekends to what he describes as ‘drink, clothes, clubbing, girls’. Pictured: Eating in his living room
Joshua, who has two sisters and a brother, has previously told how he did not want his fame and success to jeopardise his relationship with his mother.
Following a fight last year, he said: ‘I’ll take the belt home and she’s proud, but I want to keep our mother-son relationship on a level and not be like she favours me as her son because I’m world champion.’
The grounded boxer has told previously how he still helps her with chores around the house. In an interview, he said: ‘I’ll still do that, buying the milk, eggs, anything like that.’
He added: ‘The only thing I ask mum to help me with is my food, so she does most of the shopping, gets the fish, meat and chickens and stuff. But I do more than my fair share when I’m at home.’
In another interview with the London Evening Standard last year, he said: ‘I still live at home. Mum’s cooking is amazing and it is great to have my family so close.
‘Mum is used to the way I have to train now so she makes amazing food to help me recharge and prepare for fights.’
Will the man mountain boxer who lives with his mum be Britain’s first sporting billionaire?
By Guy Adams for the Daily Mail
Good looking, highly intelligent, sensitive and softly spoken, Anthony Oluwafemi Olaseni Joshua is a very different type of professional boxer.
The 27-year-old former Olympic champion, who burst onto the scene at London 2012, doesn’t overturn tables in press conferences, or indulge in ‘trash talk’ to denigrate opponents.
Neither does he surround himself with a dodgy entourage, throw banknotes around strip clubs, or live in an obnoxious mansion.
The squeaky-clean heavyweight, who still lives with his mother, is nonetheless at the top of his game
With even more millions already flowing in from blue-chip endorsement deals he has struck — a measure of Anthony Joshua’s potential ability to transcend boxing — some believe this young man can become not only Britain’s most famous sportsman, but also the world’s first billionaire athlete.
So who exactly is this man mountain? And how did he make it from the mean streets of Watford to the summit of professional sport?
He grew up on the gritty Meriden Estate in Watford, one of four children of his mother Yeta
Mum’s the word
Home is a tiny former council flat in Golders Green, North London, which Anthony co-owns with his mother.
It was one of his first big purchases after turning professional: he bought it in November 2013, paying £174,000 in cash. The duo share their cosy property with a dog, Roxy, and a huge television, which he uses to play video games during down-time.
Anthony is fiercely protective of Yeta, a petite 51-year-old social worker, who came to the UK from Nigeria in the Eighties.
He recently gave her a new Range Rover so she didn’t ‘get ripped off’ by a disreputable car dealer, and prevents her from attending his bouts, or even watching them on TV.
‘I don’t really let my mum come to my fights,’ he explained recently. ‘I’ve banned her. It’s not a place where you want to see your kid. I would rather she not be there.’
Drugs and crime
He grew up on the gritty Meriden Estate in Watford, one of four children of Yeta and her half-Nigerian, half-Irish ex-husband, Robert.
A difficult youth, he fell in with a bad crowd, and was sent to boarding school in West Africa in an effort to curb his enthusiasm for drink, drugs and petty crime.
It didn’t work, however. He left after just one term and returned to the local Kings Langley secondary, before quitting full-time education at 16.
A fine athlete, he could run 100m in under 11 seconds despite being a smoker and was a talented footballer who had trials for Charlton Athletic. But that career path ended when he attacked an opposition striker and was charged with actual bodily harm, for which he received a warning.
Anthony was later banned from Watford town centre, and spent a period on remand at Reading Prison, for ‘fighting and other crazy stuff’.
Anthony posted this image of him working out on Instagram, saying: ‘Welcome to the KO Show June 25th’ – in reference to his fight against Dominic Breazeale which he later won
Saved by boxing
At 18, Anthony was a jobbing bricklayer devoting weekends to what he describes as ‘drink, clothes, clubbing, girls’.
Then his cousin Ben, a promising amateur boxer, persuaded him to step into the ring at Finchley Boxing Club. ‘From the first punch, I was hooked,’ he says.
That was in 2008. Four years later, he was winning gold at the Olympics and earning an OBE in the process.
It wasn’t all plain sailing, though. Early amateur bouts saw him wearing offender’s ankle tags, a hangover from previous convictions.
Then, in 2011, police stopped him for speeding in North London, and found a bag containing 8oz of cannabis on the passenger seat.
Anthony looked destined for jail, a development that would have 𝓀𝒾𝓁𝓁ed his Olympic prospects.
But the judge gave him a second chance. He escaped with a 12-month community order and 100 hours of unpaid work, and decided to clean up his act. Out went drink, drugs, and dodgy friends. In came clean-living, for which he is now famed.
‘The arrest changed a lot. It forced me to grow up and accept my responsibilities,’ he has since admitted. ‘I would have been in drug gangs and prison but for boxing.’
Dinner involves meat or fish and rice, plus more vegetables. Between meals, he drinks ‘recovery shakes’ containing liquid protein and a couple of bananas
Human colossus
Anthony stands 6ft 6in, weighs 17st, and has a reach that stretches 82in, or almost 7ft. Even in the heavyweight division this makes it tricky, and highly dangerous, for opponents to land a shot on him.
His chest has a circumference of 47in while for his clenched fist, the figure is 14in. Being punched by him is like being whacked by an 11lb sledgehammer travelling at 30mph.
These extraordinary physical attributes saw him clock up 18 wins before his winning fight this month, all by knockout.
The hard work
During the 14 weeks leading up to a fight, Anthony decamps to Sheffield, where he lives in a rented terrace house and spends days with head coach Rob McCracken at the English Sports Institute, home of the British Olympic team.
He trains twice a day, for roughly two hours a time. Morning sessions are spent doing heavy lifting with his strength and conditioning coach Jamie Reynolds, while afternoons are spent in the ring.
In between, he sleeps as much as possible, and aims always to be in bed by 9pm. On occasional ‘rest days’ he goes on long runs.
A strong believer in sports science, Anthony often trains in an altitude mask, to replicate low oxygen conditions, and does several of his drills in sandpits, which he hopes will help him to develop the balance and stability of Brazilian footballers.
To recover, he has occasional ice baths and uses Rob Madden, a Harley Street physiotherapist, to carry out deep muscle massages along with ‘intramuscular acupuncture’ with 2in needles.
Each night, he spends an hour in special trousers made by a firm called NormaTec which use compressed air to massage his limbs. This arduous process helps make Joshua a perfect physical specimen.
‘If you went into a laboratory and designed the perfect athlete to be heavyweight champion of the world you wouldn’t be far off what he is,’ says Reynolds.
Anthony is photographed for a Daily Mail feature at his gym in Es𝓈ℯ𝓍 in September 2014
The spoils
For the last of his 18 fights, the purse was a reported £4 million. This one is expected to generate the biggest pay-per-view revenue of any British bout in history — as well as Joshua’s astonishing £15 million payday.
The real money is, however, going to be made outside the ring. His good looks and easy charm have helped him attract blue-chip sponsors who usually give boxing a wide berth, including Lucozade, Lynx deodorant and Jaguar cars.
He is already a director of seven companies, including a property firm, a custom car business and a marketing venture which recently trademarked his name for everything from sports kit and hair gel, to hair removal products.
Scott Welch, a former British champion, says that if he fulfils his promise by dominating the heavyweight division for several years, Joshua could become ‘the first billionaire fighter’.
5,000 calories
Each Monday, Anthony’s nutritionist Mark Ellison drives his BMW estate car to an organic butchers in Sheffield, where he buys ten large chicken breasts, two entire lamb fillets, two beef fillets and several dozen eggs.
Then he proceeds to a nearby greengrocer to ‘fill up the boot’ with vegetables. Joshua begins the day with porridge and fruit, before a ‘second breakfast’ after his morning training session involving five poached eggs on toast.
Lunch is chicken and mountainous quantities of either broccoli or spinach, along with sweet potato or pasta. Dinner involves meat or fish and rice, plus more vegetables. Between meals, he drinks ‘recovery shakes’ containing liquid protein and a couple of bananas.
Altogether he aims to take on between 4,000 and 5,000 calories per day. A typical man needs just 2,500 to 3,000.
Anthony stands 6ft 6in, weighs 17st, and has a reach that stretches 82in, or almost 7ft.
Mastering chess
When he isn’t preparing for fights, Joshua’s favourite hobby is motocross. He owns a Kawasaki bike and goes riding with friends.
He’s also a voracious reader, especially of business books, and has taken up chess in homage to the former British superstar boxer Lennox Lewis, a brilliant amateur player who has appeared on the cover of British Chess Magazine.
‘I read a book called Think And Grow Rich,’ Joshua said recently, ‘and started thinking how Lennox applied his mind to boxing.
‘I started talking with him regularly and he mentioned chess. I got a lady friend to teach me and now I’m ready to give him a game.’
His little champ
For female fans, there is good news and bad news. On one hand, the wealthy Adonis, who has been linked to everyone from singer Rita Ora to model Cara Delevingne, is officially single. On the other, he has what one might call ‘baggage’.
For the past decade, Anthony has been in an on/off relationship with former schoolfriend Nicole Osbourne, who works as a dance teacher and appears in pole-dancing videos on YouTube.
In October 2015, she gave birth to their son, Joseph. Six months later, Anthony revealed the existence of his ‘lil champ’ via a post on Twitter, revealing he likes to kit the 𝚋𝚊𝚋𝚢 out in designer clothes from Bond Street boutique Moncler.
Today, although the couple are not together, he regularly visits Nicole and Joseph at a £500,000 flat he bought them in Finchley, North London, not far from his home.
