Jermaine Franklin: ‘Joshua can’t break my heart’ – Boxing News

AFTER the Dillian Whyte fight I started a health journey, so I'm in much better shape for Anthony Joshua. I stopped eating red meat and started eating fruit, and I lost eight pounds before my camp started.

I wanted better health. We have a few things that run in the family – diabetes; Hypertension; heart disease—and I don't want to be just another guy with the same problem, so I've made healthy changes.

At first I was craving beef like crazy, but now it really doesn't bother me at all. I eat a lot of salads, salmon and chicken, and I started drinking juice. Now I get full so fast – it's crazy.

It's hard to try to change your life in the middle of a camp when you're used to everything and you're doing too much to your body at once. I thought it would be better to do it while I wasn't working out, and before I got back to the gym.

I'm fitter, faster and can get around easier than I could before. It hasn't changed my style, but it has improved it.

I still think I outpointed Whyte seven rounds to five – Compubox had me eight to four – but that's boxing. I'm not going to cry about it or complain about it. You just take the next thing.

From what I've heard, Joshua will knock me out in five rounds. I think he's going to come out and try to be aggressive, and we're ready for that. We're ready for him to try to box, and ready for anything he might actually try to do.

I can't say whether he's injured – I don't know him that well. But I am a competitor. In my head he trains hard and comes back for his name and to reclaim his status.

He drops his right hand at the right moment. A lot of the fights I've seen he throws decent flurries, but he has a nice right hand – he does a lot of damage and his opponents start to worry. But I have a catch – you can't break my will or take my heart. You must kill me.

Everyone says if AJ loses to me, his career is over, but I don't see it that way. It's insulting to me as a fighter. I still look at him like he's a world champion and holds three belts.

Boxing is the only sport where we write people off for a couple of losses. We don't write off a basketball team when they've been in a slump, but in boxing, when you lose your throne – if you're not at the top, it's like you're at the bottom. He still has a chance to come back.

Derrick James is a great coach – he has world champions – but it takes time for a healthy relationship to develop. I could teach you a few things in a short amount of time, but I still don't know you inside out—your weaknesses, your strengths, or your flaws. It's good for your coaches to know because they know the right things to say to you. It's a little deeper than the training aspect of the relationship you have with your trainer.

It will take at least a couple of years. If you're not that close anyway, you only see each other when you go to the gym. There are a couple of hours in the day. Most fighters probably only train four times a week, so seeing a guy eight hours a week and expecting him to know you—it's not going to work that way.

Oleksandr Usyk and Tyson Fury are the world's top two heavyweights. Joshua can still go third, but after back-to-back losses, Deontay Wilder could go third. But in the same breath, it's still tough – it's a tie between them and Andy Ruiz Jnr.

Many sleep on Usyk and his skills. He is very skilled. But I did a bit of training with Tyson before the Whyte fight – he's not in that much of a rush but he's got good timing and a couple of tricks that throw you off your game. Usyk has good footwork – he hits a lot and he's super busy. It would have been a great fight, but as long as Fury could have kept his distance and kept the jab working, he could have pulled it off.