The good guys and bad guys of Anthony Joshua have always had a complex connection. My thoughts stray to a conversation we had this week ten years ago in a bar at The O2 in London, when he was working through some of the discomforts of his first year as a professional wrestler.

Strangers staring at you from the street had become the norm by then, which is what happens to people who become famous. However, Joshua resented his new world and struggled to overcome certain instincts in those early days.

“It’s peculiar,” he informed me. I see people staring at me as I stroll along the street. “What the fuck are you looking at?” asks my head. then you pause to consider: “What they’re doing is normal; they recognize you, that’s all.”

Eventually, his inner monologue would result in a kinder reaction, and the other person would always be unaware of what had been going through his head. Daniel Dubois, Anthony Joshua’s British opponent, defeated him decisively last weekend.

Joshua was brutally knocked out in five rounds in front of a packed Wembley Stadium.

We both found it quite amusing and he went on to attribute his impulses to the ‘lion’ within because, naturally, it was the lion that created him and a lion is useful when you fight for a living. The lion is something to be preserved and treasured. But he was fighting that too.

Taming that side of his character wasn’t always easy or natural and being Anthony Joshua meant it was necessary: ​​he had more corporate partners than any professional boxer in the modern era and soon they were major brands such as Jaguar and French Connection. who will be joined by Hugo Boss and Beats, who paid fortunes to be linked to his name and might cringe if too much lion appeared in the wrong place.

All of which brings to mind another part of that conversation. He was trying to wink at one of his many sponsors and it came off a bit forced, so he finally gave up: “That sounds a bit fucked up, doesn’t it?” We laugh at that too.

It was endearing, if not fascinating, to watch what he was going through when he was 24, and this was all before he became world champion, remember.

The attention, the expectations, the need to be someone different in different rooms, it all started on a high floor after London 2012 and only increased.

He came a long way from a Watford gang and a Reading remand cell to becoming one of British sport’s biggest stars and I have often detected an identity crisis in Joshua over the decade since our first meeting. several interviews.

A personality trapped between characters, a fighter trapped between styles, a lion between the bars of a golden cage. Eddie Hearn once had a description that got close to the crux of the matter: ‘A bad guy trying to be good’, and it was talked about in the context of how Joshua’s cruel character in the ring was different from that outside.

The problem is that what happens inside the ring has grown to mimic Joshua’s long-ago external confusion. It was confusion written in his bruises last Saturday night when he was given the hideout of his career against Daniel Dubois at Wembley.

That was a fight when he tried to hit a bulldozer and when that didn’t work, he tried to attack his lion again and was crushed.

Joshua has achieved a lot in this sport, having won Olympic gold in 2012.

He is also a two-time heavyweight champion and has consistently sold out stadiums.

But he has arguably never been the same since losing to Andy Ruiz Jr in June 2019.

He didn’t look like the bully we remember from the good old days; instead, he appeared lost, as he has so often done since Andy Ruiz defeated him five years ago. Sadly, he hasn’t performed well against more formidable opponents in a long time. If anything, his corner prior to the fifth round last weekend encapsulated the foggy memory of it all.

Joshua said, “Roll the dice, no,” in response to his coach Ben Davison’s instruction to “roll the dice.” He was hence successful. Not only did Shane McGuigan, who was providing commentary, question their actions, but it was evident when he saw Joshua’s head resting on the bottom rope a short while later. Its good and evil have lived beneath that same arch. Joshua ended up semi-conscious in the same stadium where he had his finest moment against Wladimir Klitschko seven years ago. Clear minds were needed, but none were found.

Many in boxing have attributed Joshua’s decline to the first fight with Ruiz, when his sense of invincibility exploded into nothing with a southpaw to his right ear. He became more inhibited, shy, as we say.

Others who know him particularly well hark back to the two-way brutality of Klitschko’s victory and an epiphany that he needed a more tactical team.

In doing so, they also say he lost touch with the rawer nuances of aggression that made him so formidable. He had lost too much of the lion.

Watching him go from one style to another against Dubois and, indeed, the first of his two losses against Oleksandr Usyk, it’s hard to disagree. No one knows where this loss leaves him.

Joshua’s trainer Ben Davison was the first in the ring after last weekend’s knockout, but his prior advice in the corner may have confused Joshua.

Joshua never managed to confront Dubois and did not seem to have a clear plan to stop his rival.

Joshua deserves respect for all he has accomplished, but his legacy is complicated.