Anthony Joshua To Change Coach For Oleksandr Usyk Rematch

The British heavyweight lost his world titles to his mandatory challenger last month as he suffered his second career defeat.

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He has since faced calls to sack his training team including head coach Rob McCracken after his tactics and game plan were deemed faulty by many analysts.

Joshua has since embarked on a tour of different gyms in America, including one owned by Canelo Alvarez’s trainer Eddie Reynoso.

Anthony Joshua

He also spent time with Ronnie Shields who currently trains Jermall Charlo and who counts Mike Tyson, Evander Holyfield and Arturo Gatti among his former clients.

“It was them who reached out to me,” Shields told ThaBoxingVoice.

“They reached out to me and they asked me would I be interested in taking a look at AJ and he would like to come down to Texas and see if things could work out between him and I.

“I said, ‘Yeah, no problem, I would love to take a look at him, love to see if we can mesh together.’

“They reached out to me and they asked me would I be interested in taking a look at AJ and he would like to come down to Texas and see if things could work out between him and I.

“I said, ‘Yeah, no problem, I would love to take a look at him, love to see if we can mesh together.’

“It would be great to get him to reclaim his world titles that he lost to Usyk and I think I’ve got the capabilities to help him to do that.

“In the last two days, everything seemed to go well. The first day was just all talk, we talked for about three or four hours.

“And when he came back today I told him I wanted to do just some light padwork with him just to show him everything we talked about.”

Shields continued: “We watched a few rounds of the Usyk fight together and I just pointed out some things that I thought he should’ve done that he didn’t do.

“We had a great talk yesterday, today was even greater. There’s something I showed him that he said, ‘Man, I was never taught to do this.’

“It surprises me that a guy who was heavyweight champion of the world don’t know certain things.

“Like he said, ‘European boxing is different from boxing in the United States.’ He realised that he had to come to the United States to get something different.”

Reflecting on the Usyk fight, he added: “Obviously it wasn’t the right game plan, I told him he didn’t fight like himself. I think he’s a much better fighter than what he showed in that Usyk fight.

“I watched a few rounds with him, I told him about certain things and he said, ‘Yeah man, that’s what we should’ve done, but we didn’t do it.’

“I don’t know what their game plan was, but obviously it wasn’t the right one and I guess he didn’t feel like it was the right one so this is why he wanted to make a change.”