Last weekend, Boreham Wood Football Club headed stateside to support local boxer Anthony Joshua in his first professional fight across the pond and whilst it definitely didn’t go to plan, we know AJ will come again and we expect him to bounce back even stronger.
BWFC Chairman Danny Hunter and son Billy enjoyed a long weekend culminating in a World Title fight in New York City, seeing the many impressive landmarks that the big apple has to offer – including the Statue of Liberty, Ellis Island, Empire State Building, Broadway, Times Square, Hells Kitchen, St Patrick’s Cathedral, Central Park and so much more.
The main focus of the trip however was to attend the iconic and world-renowned Madison Square Garden on Saturday night as Andy Ruiz Jr produced a monumental upset on the biggest of stages to dethrone our very own unbeaten Anthony Joshua.
Despite the shock result that in truth shook the world, it was according to the Wood Chairman “an incredible atmosphere inside the arena that was full of 8,000 British fans who even in defeat behaved impeccably having made the same journey to the East Coast of North America.
“It was great just to share such an experience with them.”
With Joshua born just down the road in Watford, our football club from the terraces to boardroom is full of supporters who have followed AJ’s rise to prominence with pride and in defeat we are still very proud to support our local boxer who we know will become champion of the world once again hopefully before the end of the year.
The Wood Chairman said: “It was also a great privilege for my son and myself to see the sights, to share the build-up and to meet and chat to so many of the great British boxing fans and many of AJ’s team throughout a trip of a lifetime. Whilst it may have ended in tears and disappointment for AJ, it’s a dropped stitch, nothing more, he’s a warrior and he’ll learn from getting over eager after sitting Ruiz on his pants in the third round and we’ll definitely be there backing him again when he shuts up his doubters and regains his belts either here in the UK or in America in the proposed rematch.
From all of us at BWFC, keep your belief AJ, it’s your first defeat and you always learn more from defeat than you ever do in victory. CS Lewis once wrote “pains gods megaphone to rouse a deaf world” – learn from your pain.
