Former heavyweight champion Anthony Joshua reveals admiration for Kyrgios and shifting opinion after Usyk loss: “Now I can understand it because I’ve experienced it, that anger and emotion of losing”

Boxing great Anthony Joshua came to appreciate the passion Kyrgios shows on the court after watching him at Wimbledon and experiencing similar anger.

Joshua admitted that he's not a huge tennis fan but he did follow Nick Kyrgios at Wimbledon as there was so much media attention around it. The British boxer found Kyrgios a bit 'crazy' to begin with but understood his passion when he experienced similar emotions after his loss to Usyk:

“I don’t think people underestimate it, what I’ve come to figure in life is if you’ve never experienced it, you can’t understand it. So for those who’ve never experienced it, I don’t think it’s that they underestimate it, they just won’t understand it. We were talking about tennis on the way here and Kyrgios, I’m not a big tennis fan but I watched him at Wimbledon. Amazing character, I like his character but I thought ‘rah, this guy’s a bit crazy’."

Joshua continued:

"Now I can understand it because I’ve experienced it, that anger and emotion of losing. But at the time when I watched him at Wimbledon before my fight, I underestimated it. I was like, ‘Why is he acting like that? It’s only a game of tennis, it will come again.’ So it’s not underestimating it, I said until you love something so much that it can make you do crazy things, you probably wouldn’t understand.”