Sports
Efe Ajagba interview: “I Can Beat Anthony Joshua With My Skills”
“Skill would beat Joshua, not power”
Efe Ajagba is an unbeaten Nigerian heavyweight
Anthony Joshua’s long-held dream of fighting in Africa could be aided by the rising threat of another Nigerian heavyweight who plans to knock him off his perch.
Efe Ajagba has already plotted how he would dethrone Joshua, whose pride for his African heritage is worn in the form of a tattoo on his arm.
“The people would support Joshua because he is the heavyweight champ,” Ajagba tells Sky Sports but he is quickly establishing himself as a dangerous contender with vicious KO power who could become the perfect foil for Joshua to stage a fight against in Nigeria.
“Skill would beat Joshua, not power,” said the undefeated Ajagba. “Me and Joshua both have the power. But skills control the power.
“I have more skills.”
Surely Joshua, an Olympic gold medallist and two-time heavyweight champion, has his fair share of skill?
“I don’t think so,” Ajagba says. “The best weapon of Joshua’s is the left hook and right uppercut. He doesn’t have a good jab.
“I respect him. He is the heavyweight champion. I respect everything about him – his talent and his potential. He is a humble guy.
“People are saying that I talk Joshua down. But I don’t want to do that.
“Joshua is from Nigeria so he is a part of Africa, too.”
Joshua was inspired to reclaim his IBF, WBA and WBO titles from Andy Ruiz Jr last year after a trip to the Makoko slum in Nigeria, the African nation where his parents are from.
“They told me: ‘Make sure you go get those belts back’,” Joshua told Sky Sports at the time. “That is massively inspiring.”
He hopes to one day emulate Muhammad Ali by fighting in Africa but it is logistically difficult despite the clear interest. Ali beat George Foreman in ‘the Rumble in the Jungle’ in Zaire in 1974.
The emergence of a challenger like Ajagba can only benefit Joshua’s dream.
“Absolutely in the future,” Ajagba says of facing Joshua on African soil. “It would be perfect. Two Nigerian warriors fighting in a title fight.”
Heavyweight prospects are defined by their power but Ajagba, more than most, is carving out a reputation as a wrecking ball.
He is unbeaten in 13 and the only opponent to go the distance was Ali Eren Demirezen. That fight was Ajagba’s hardest examination so far – Demirezen had a better record, unbeaten in 10, before they met.
Curiously he plays down his knockout power insisting it is nothing special.
“I don’t think so. It’s not about me,” he says. “It’s about the way I throw my punch and how my opponent feels it.
“It’s not about power. Power comes from how you throw the punch, and how you land the punch. Move your legs into the punch, that’s where the power is.”
Ajagba is the youngest son of a boxer who initially discouraged him from following the same path. But trouble became too easy to find for a young and feisty Ajagba.
“I discovered boxing in Nigeria. I would fight on the streets and I always won,” he says. “So I started boxing.
“Fighting on the streets is different to boxing. I had natural power. I wasn’t fighting a boxer, I would fight bodybuilders. I wasn’t a boxer, he wasn’t a boxer. So I hit them, they fell. Boxing is different because fighters train everyday to get in the ring.”
At first he did not enjoy the discipline that came with boxing.
“No, not immediately. I had to take my time and think about it.
“When I started boxing they taught me foundations – how to move my legs, how to throw combinations.”
He was Nigeria’s only boxing representative at the 2016 Olympics and was eliminated by Ivan Dychko of Kazakhstan, who is now 9-0 as a pro but with none of the clamour attached to Ajagba’s rise.
He was scouted at the Olympics and brought to Houston, Texas, a city with a large Nigerian immigrant population to base his professional career.
Was it a hard transition?
“Not really. The environment is very different. I saw a different life when I came to America, a different community.
“The environment in America is beautiful. Nigeria is beautiful too, but America is a different culture.”
He worked with Ronnie Shields, who had previously trained Mike Tyson and Evander Holyfield, and the opponents soon began to fall. Seven of his first eight fights were finished in a single round.
One of those remains among the strangest results in boxing history, although Ajagba does not find it funny.
His 2018 win against Curtis Harper was officially clocked at one second. The opening bell rang, Harper calmly exited the ring and walked backstage, never to be seen again.
The clip went viral, viewed millions of times in the days afterwards. It emerged Harper was protesting against his own promoter.
“I was mad and confused,” Ajagba says. “I didn’t know what was going on. Why did he walk out of the ring”
Anthony Joshua: only skills can beat him, says Ajagba
“I didn’t see him after the fight. But before the weigh-in, his girlfriend came to me and said: ‘Are you fighting Curtis Harper?’
“I didn’t know why she was asking me questions.
“She said: ‘You have the talent, you have the skills’.
“She came to me to ask me to take it easy in the fight!
“I can’t do that.
“Why did she ask me to take it easy?
“So when Curtis Harper walked out of the ring, I was mad and confused.”
The next stage of Ajagba’s development will be promoted by Bob Arum’s Top Rank. He has changed trainers to Kay Koroma, who also works with Shakur Stevenson and Jarrett Hurd, meaning he will be based out of Virginia.
Aged just 26 and with all of his fights coming in the USA, he is still a prospect being carefully managed through the heavyweight division.
There are issues to iron out – last December he was floored by Iago Kiladze, an opponent on a four-fight winless run, but recovered to avoid catastrophe. Earlier this year he needed nine rounds to get rid of Razvan Cojanu, who was beaten inside two rounds by Daniel Dubois.
Ajagba is hoping to make his Top Rank debut in September and promoter Bob Arum said: “He has immense physical tools and a great work ethic. I have the utmost confidence that we’re looking at a future heavyweight champion.”
Brazilian football legend Pele, arguably the greatest player ever, has died at the age of 82.
He is credited with scoring a world record 1,281 goals in 1,363 appearances during a 21-year career, including 77 goals in 92 matches for his country.
The only player to win the World Cup three times, lifting the trophy in 1958, 1962 and 1970, Pele was named Fifa’s Player of the Century in 2000.
He had been suffering with kidney and prostate problems in recent years.
Pele had surgery to remove a tumour from his colon in September 2021 at the Albert Einstein Hospital in Sao Paulo, after the tumour was detected in routine tests. He was readmitted to hospital in late November 2022.
His daughter Kely Nascimento has kept fans updated on her father’s condition with regular social media updates from hospital.
Shortly afte he passed on, she posted a picture of what appeared to be Pele’s family’s hands on his body in hospital and wrote: “Everything we are is thanks to you. We love you infinitely. Rest in peace.
The hospital confirmed that Pele died “due to the failure of multiple organs, a result of the progression of colon cancer associated with his previous clinical condition”.
Pele’s Twitter account posted: “Inspiration and love marked the journey of King Pele, who peacefully passed away today. Love, love and love, forever.”
The Brazilian Football Confederation said: “Pele was much more than the greatest sportsperson of all time. “Our king of football was the greatest exponent of a victorious Brazil, who was never afraid when faced with difficulty. He promised his father a World Cup and he presented us with three.
“The King gave us a new Brazil and we are so thankful for his legacy. Thank you, Pele.”
President Jair Bolsonaro has declared three days of national mourning.
Pele’s former club Santos released details of his funeral. On Monday morning his body will be moved from the hospital to the club’s Estadio Urbano Caldeira, where the coffin will be placed in the centre of the pitch for the public to pay respects.
Edson Arantes do Nascimento, better known as Pele, became a global star when, aged 17, he helped Brazil win the 1958 World Cup in Sweden, forcing his way into the starting line-up by the knockout stages.
He scored the only goal in a 1-0 victory over Wales in the quarter-finals, a hat-trick against France in the semi-final and two in a 5-2 triumph over the hosts in the final.
What made Pele great:
*Scored a reported 1,281 goals in 1,363 games
*Made 14 appearances at World Cup finals, scoring 12 goals
*Racked up 126 goals in 1959 alone
*Only player to win three World Cups
*Pele had made his debut for club side Santos two years earlier at the age of 15, scoring in a 7-1 win over Corinthians de Santo Andre.
It was the first of 643 goals he would score for the club in official competitions over 19 years, although Santos claim the total is more than 1,000 once exhibition matches – often against high-profile European opposition – are taken into account.
The Brazilian Football Confederation and Santos say Pele scored 1,283 goals in 1,367 matches, while Fifa claims it was 1,281 goals in 1,366 games.
At the 1962 World Cup, Pele, then 21, scored a brilliant individual goal in a 2-0 win over Mexico to open their campaign, but was injured in the next match and watched from the sidelines as his team defended their title.
The final part of his trilogy of World Cup wins was his most iconic. After being fouled out of the 1966 tournament in England, he was the fulcrum of a thrilling attacking team that swept to the title in 1970, scoring the opening goal in a 4-1 win over Italy in the final.
‘Legend’ Pele synonymous with football – Lineker
From his joyful tears on the chest of team-mate Nilton Santos to his embrace with England captain Bobby Moore, Pele’s moments of magic have spanned eras and defined the history of the sport.
He finished his club career as part of a star-studded New York Cosmos side, playing alongside German legend Franz Beckenbauer and fellow 1970 World Cup winner Carlos Alberto.
“In music there is Beethoven and the rest. In football, there is Pele and the rest,” he said in 2000. In a poll conducted by BBC Sport in 2020, Pele was voted the greatest player, ahead of Lionel Messi, Cristiano Ronaldo, Diego Maradona and Johan Cruyff.
‘A boy genius, a World Cup hero, a global icon’ – BBC Sport chief football writer Phil McNulty
The image of the shirtless Pele being carried aloft by team-mates and supporters after the World Cup was won in Mexico City in 1970 is seared on the memory, along with that famous picture of another shirtless embrace with England captain Bobby Moore (above), a gesture packed with mutual respect, after Brazil’s 1-0 group game victory in Guadalajara.
His greatness can be measured by the simple fact that he could make football a spectacle of natural grace and beauty when he missed as much as when he scored.
One of the game’s first global personalities, Pele layered his brilliance across a career spanning from a teenager with Santos to a money-spinner at New York Cosmos.
Wherever football is played, the name of Pele will be synonymous with it.
BBC Sports
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