Anthony Joshua has ordered his mother to stay away from this weekend’s showdown with Wladimir Klitschko .
Yeta Odusanya will not be one of the 90,000 inside Wembley Stadium on Saturday night. Instead, she will be a couple of miles away at home in north London — on the strict orders of her unbeaten IBF heavyweight champion son.
Brit Joshua has not let his mum watch him fight once since he won the Olympic final at London 2012 and feels it could be too much of a distraction to have her ringside, worrying about him.
His father, Robert, will be there, but Yeta will wait at home for the phone call, telling her the fight is over.
“My old man will be there again, but I don’t really let my mum come to my fights,” said Joshua. “I’ve banned her. It’s not a place where you want to see your kid, I don’t think, at a fight. My dad can watch it, but not my mum.
“She is confident enough in me to watch, but I would rather she not be there. One of my cousins will call her after the fight. She enjoys it all, though, and she gets a few freebies.”
Joshua has worked on a game plan to defeat Klitschko, but says he cannot simply copy what Tyson Fury did when he dethroned the Ukrainian in Dusseldorf in November 2015.
Joshua says he cannot mimic Fury’s awkward, switch-hitting style and his tactics will be based on his speed and power.
“I haven’t watched the Fury fight much,” he said.