Boxing star, Anthony Joshua has moved back into his mother's two-bedroom council flat despite earning an estimated £15million from defeating Wladimir
Boxing star, Anthony Joshua has moved back into his mother’s two-bedroom 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, Joshua could soon be the world’s first billionaire boxer.
But despite the riches on offer the star is back living with his mother Yeta Odusanya, 51, and his baby son after several grueling months away from home. 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.
The father-of-one bought her the former council flat in North London for £174,000 after turning professional in 2013, and was pictured moving back in yesterday. 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.
Joshua Anthony with his mother
Joshua 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.”
‘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.’
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.
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 at 18 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.
Joshua with his mum (behind the council flat)
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.’
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. ‘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.’
‘Mum is used to the way I have to train now so she makes amazing food to help me recharge and prepare for fights.’
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 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.
On doing drugs and crime
Anthony’s father is half Nigerian, half Irish Robert who is now an ex of his mother. 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’. 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.’
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’.
His love life
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 who he likes to kit out in designer clothes from Bond Street boutique Moncler.
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