“You’re going to laugh.” Joshua Buatsi is reading out his daily to-do list and the tasks are not glamorous – especially given the light-heavyweight fighter is an Olympic bronze medallist and on the verge of a world title shot in 2022.
Buatsi is one of the most recognisable faces in British boxing and has long been tipped to reach the very top of boxing, like his long-time friend and biggest supporter, Anthony Joshua.
The unbeaten 28-year-old insists he wants to stay the same guy he has always been and shies away from setting himself too many long-term goals.
“Personal responsibility is important to me,” he tells BBC Sport. “I don’t map out a year. One goal that remains constant is to win. Just find a way to win. How does 2022 look? One of the aims is I want to win a world title.
“I can’t say if it’s going to be the first or second or third fight, but that year I want to win a world title. Hopefully that opportunity will come. I will give everything to take it.”
He adds: “Don’t try to live up to someone else’s life. What you have is what you have. Live within your means. Don’t kill yourself to impress.”
The Ghana-born fighter instead likes to set daily goals. Trivial as they may sound, they keep him grounded.
“I’ve got a to-do list on the side there. I’ve only done one out of five so I’m slacking. By the evening I will have it all done,” he says, laughing.
“One was to flatten out all these boxes. One was to be on the phone to Vodafone. The other one was there’s a letter I need to read and write a complaint about. There’s five or six things. I’m moving through it slowly.”
Training with the ‘Godfather’
Buatsi, who was raised in south London, has spent the best part of the year training in the United States. He linked up with Virgil Hunter, the coach whose work with two-weight undefeated world champion Andre Ward has made him a big name in the boxing world.
Being away from home for so long has been “challenging”, Buatsi admits, but he is confident he made the right choice.
“I don’t sit back and think I shouldn’t have done it. Instead I think I should have done this ages ago,” he says.
“I can see why people call Virgil ‘the Godfather’. There’s a father figure persona to him. He’s one of those people, when he talks you want to listen. He’s always dropping jewels so you want to listen. It’s been amazing.”
‘I want to see how I do against these guys’
A hand injury forced Buatsi to pull out of his last fight of the year – he had been booked on the undercard of Derek Chisora’s heavyweight rematch against Joseph Parker in Manchester this weekend.
Instead he is nursing the injury and looking ahead to a big year. Buatsi thinks a fight against WBA (Super) champion Dmitry Bivol is the “easier” world title bout to make, considering that in Eddie Hearn they share the same promoter.
There are also a host of domestic bouts Buatsi could pursue. So many in fact – with Anthony Yarde, Callum Smith and Dan Azeez in the division – Buatsi is keen to push for a tournament-style showdown between British light-heavyweights.
“I think we should all just get chucked in a boxing tournament that will last maybe a year and a half and all fight each other. Get it cracking. People want to see us fight each other,” he says.
“Myself, Callum Smith, Callum Johnson, Anthony Yarde, Dan Azeez – see now I’ve started a list here so I’m going to get myself in trouble. Other light heavies will say I don’t rate them…
“Let’s all get in there and mix it up. We all want the world title shot, but domestically we have something we could do here. Are we going to sit back at 40 and be like ‘damn, we could have all fought each other?’
“I want to see how I do against these guys,” he adds. “Everyone is claiming they’re number one. We’ve all won the British title before.
“There’s a whole load of reasons everyone can say they’re number one and we’ll never know who is number one until we fight each other.”
