Joshua never approached Team Nigeria for Olympic outing – Nwankpa, Okorodudu

Two former national boxing coaches, Jerry Okorodudu and Obisia Nwankpa, have denied news making the rounds that the Unified world boxing champion, Anthony Joshua, came home in 2008 to seek a place in Team Nigeria boxing camp preparing for the Olympic Games in Beijing, China.
In the wake of Joshua’s recent defeat of Wladimir Klitscho, the media had been awash with the news that the new WBA champion was shunned by Nigeria when he made an attempt to represent the country at the Beijing Games in 2008.
But in separate chats with The Point on Tuesday, the two former boxing coaches said Joshua never attempted to fight for Nigeria.
According to former boxer and coach, Nwankpa, who was a national boxing coach at the time, he never set his eyes on Joshua, contrary to speculations in some sections of the Nigerian media that the boxer was denied the opportunity of flying Nigeria’s flag in China.
“It is a lie. I never received a call from Joshua or from any official informing me of Joshua coming to represent Nigeria. It is the duty of the Sports Ministry or the officials in charge of amateur boxing in Nigeria to bring in any boxer coming from abroad to represent the country. Unfortunately, there was none. I am talking to you because I know you are important and you will not mislead the world on this issue. Joshua never approached me. It was a rumour,” he said.
On his part, Okorodudu, who also became a national coach after Nwankpa, said that during his days as a coach, he never heard about the fact that Joshua really wanted to represent Nigeria.
“There was nothing like that when we took over from other coaches. There was no news as such because Nigeria will not have the courage and the resources to train a great potential like Joshua. Definitely, we would have loved to have him but he never made up his mind about coming to Nigeria,” Okorodudu said.
The Nigerian-born Briton knocked out Wladimir Klitschko in the 11th round on Saturday to become the unified world boxing king at the Wembley stadium, London, the United Kingdom.