Robert Garcia is standing by some harsh, if honest, words he made not long ago regarding his former client, former heavyweight champion Anthony Joshua.
Garcia, the veteran trainer out of Riverside, California, drew headlines last year after he described his then-charge as “mentally defeated” in the late rounds of his heavyweight rematch to WBO, WBA, IBF heavyweight champion Oleksandr Usyk in Saudi Arabia. As in their first fight, Usyk won a decision.
After his remarks had been published, Garcia tried his hand at damage control by coming out and insisting that he had been mistranslated. But the outlet, the Spanish-language website Izquierdazo, issued a statement standing by their reporting and their translation.
In a recent interview, Garcia owned his comments, saying he believes he was not out of line for uttering them.
“Just because I was his trainer doesn’t mean I’m gonna lie about [his performance],” Garcia told iD Boxing. “I wasn’t the only one that said that. Then he should be mad and he should be frustrated with the whole world because mostly everybody said the same thing. When you have a fighter who does so good in one round that you almost stop your opponent, it does make a difference when the next round is totally opposite.
“So there was a lot to be said by so many boxing people, so many boxing experts, because I’m not the only one that said that. And then what happened after the fight when he grabbed the mic and all that, I think that was a lot of frustration. I think that had to do with maybe knowing that you were so close and you let it go. Maybe a little bit of embarrassment because that reaction wasn’t the right reaction that a fighter usually takes. You don’t see it that often. It wasn’t just me saying he was frustrated and that he was a little … ashamed by his performance.”
Garcia’s comments apparently were not received well by Joshua, who has decided to pair up with top trainer Derrick James instead for his next fight.
Joshua is scheduled to fight Jermaine Franklin of Michigan on April 1 at the O2 Arena in London.
“At the end I know the work with me and [co-trainer] AJ Fernandez wasn’t bad either,” Garcia said. “It could’ve been better. Honestly it could’ve been better. But nobody knows and nobody mentions everything that went during training camp.
“If I’m always gonna say nothing but good things, you also have to say some negative things so that the whole team understands, the fighter understands.”