Anthony Joshua secured a sixth-round stoppage against Jake Paul in their December bout and the English fighter came in for praise from his opponent’s mother after the win
Jake Paul’s mother Pam Stepnick has praised Anthony Joshua for apologising to her personally after his victory over the YouTuber-turned-boxer. It took Joshua six rounds to stop his opponent, who was taken to hospital with a broken jaw
In footage after the fight, Joshua can be seen approaching Stepnick and sharing some words. He describes his beaten opponent as a “strong guy,” while reminding his opponent’s mother that he two has been knocked down in the ring.
“Even Anthony Joshua had some class and apologised to me, essentially,” Stepnick said on the Impaulsive podcast. “He worked his way through the crowd and came up to me and said: ‘Mom, just know it’s just boxing. It’s just the fight game’.
She was less forgiving towards promoter Eddie Hearn, though. “As a mom, my aggression comes out too,” she said. “I wanted to get in that ring and punch Eddie Hearn, for instance… because I don’t like his smug face.
“Jake’s over there struggling and he’s sitting over there smiling like the cat who swallowed the canary. Guess what? Did he f***ing get in the ring?
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Paul was left needing surgery on his jaw after the fight, but the 28-year-old’s mother didn’t hold any ill will towards the man who beat him. “Jake chose to get into the ring with a humongous guy, that’s on Jake,” she added.
“I believe that Jake really thought he could knock him (Joshua) out so it made me feel very confident and I knew God was in his corner. And he still was, because this could have turned out even worse than it did, so God really was on our shoulders. And to get through the process of getting into the ER, having surgery, out of the ER, discharged to home within 12 hours, thank you to the angels.”
The fight was Joshua’s first since his defeat at the hands of Daniel Dubois in 2024 and left the 36-year-old with a 29-4 career record. Despite that, the Brit’s new trainer Iegor Golub doesn’t believe he’s ready to take on Tyson Fury just yet.
“We need one more fight before Fury, Fury is a very dangerous boxer,” Golub told The Voice of Boxing when asked about a potential Fury-Joshua match-up. “He has a lot of skills, a good intellectual fighter, he must be ready for this, not now.”
Joshua had called out Fury immediately after his victory over Paul. “And if Tyson Fury is as serious as he thinks he is, and he wants to put down his Twitter fingers and put on some gloves and come out and fight one of the realest fighters that will take on any challenge,” he said.
“Step in the ring with me next if you are a real bad boy. Don’t do all of that talking ‘AJ this, AJ that.’ Let’s see you in the ring and talk with your fists.”
