Richard Riakporhe thinks Anthony Joshua will have a big advantage in the rematch with Oleksandr Usyk.
Joshua meets the Ukrainian to return to the WBO, IBF, IBO and WBA Super heavyweight world championships and Riakporhe was in camp with ‘AJ’ to help him prepare for the rematch.
The fight will take place at the Jeddah Superdome in Saudi Arabia, exclusive live on Sky Sports Box Office in the United Kingdom, on 20 August and comes after Usyk, the former undisputed cruiser champion, moved to the sport’s top division and convincingly defeated the British boxer. at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium in London last September.
But heavyweight contender Riakporhe, who put his name on the hat to face newly crowned IBF champion Jai Opetaia while also target a showdown with WBO king Lawrence Okoliebelieves the Olympic gold medalist from London 2012 will enter the fray with a point to prove under his new coaching team.
Talking to Sports sky‘Midnight Train’ spoke about Joshua’s trainers, both of whom he worked with:
“Both [Garcia and Fernandez] has a similar mentality – very, very aggressive. “
“[They’re] the coach is very active and [those are] their tactics. They don’t mind going in.”
Joshua brought in Robert Garcia to join Angel Fernandez in his corner, after parting ways with longtime mentor Robert McCracken following his defeat to Usyk last year.
And Riakporhe, who had Garcia in his corner in his final bout against Fabio Turchi alongside Fernandez, with whom Joshua worked on his relationship with aforementioned McCracken, was under the impression that they could be the difference between Joshua suffering defeat in the third time or becoming a three-time champion.
“All they care about is going to war, going to war but with intelligence.”
“But we will have to impose our will on the opponent. It’s philosophy and it’s all about knockouts.
“It’s all they care about, to be honest, knocking them down and then about how they get knocked down.
“Because you can’t go in there just drop bombs and not expect everything to come back. You obviously have to be really strategic. It’s all about results and that’s all they care about.
“You will meet that old school fighter again. I know because he was trained like that. It’s kill or be killed and I think this is what you’ll see from Joshua on August 20th, you’ll see something different. “
