British boxer says he is improving all the time going into bout at a venue that brings recollections of teenage escapades nearby
‘Oh, yeah, the Opera House,” Anthony Joshua exclaims in a box at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium as his face creases with amusement and nostalgia. Rather than revealing a sudden passion for opera in Covent Garden, the world heavyweight champion relives memories of the very different Saturday nights he used to spend as a teenager clubbing in this corner of north London. The Opera House in Tottenham was one of his favourite clubs around 12 years ago when he and nine of his friends used to drive their battered cars from Watford or Finchley to have a party and cause some pretty harmless mayhem.
The 31-year-old Joshua relaxes as the stories flow from him and, at least for a while, it is possible to ignore the hundreds of people building the ring and the long walkway from the dressing rooms on the covered pitch far below where we are sitting in this vast football stadium. On Saturday night 68,000 people will cram into the arena with attention fixed on the ring where Joshua faces one of the most demanding nights of his career when he defends his WBA, WBC and IBF world titles against the unbeaten and highly skilled Oleksandr Usyk. But Joshua can enjoy a break from thinking about this testing challenge as we return to the heaving and thumping Opera House.