Josh Kelly is thriving with his new-found confidence and, consequently, feels he is now ready to face the best fighters in the world at 154lbs.
The 31-year-old boxes Flavius Biea, a 24-1 Romanian who has not lost since 2017, on Friday night in Newcastle. The velvety-fisted and fleet-footed Kelly is convinced he is hitting his peak.
“I want all of it,” he said of the biggest challenges at junior middleweight. “I think I’m mature enough now, emotionally, spiritually, mentally, physically. I feel like a few years back when I was getting all the hype, when I was back fighting at 147, I was stuck between weights and I was battling with a lot of mental things and I was not really mature. I look back at my fights and I’m like, ‘You’re a kid. You’re a real kid.’ And now I feel like I’m a man and I took a lot of stuff on and I’m mature now mentally. Emotionally, I feel I’m in the perfect place. Give me everything now. I want all the big ones.”
While there have been some additions to the camp, including mindset coach Steven Green, the core remains the same, including trainer Adam Booth, his father, and the friends and family he surrounds himself with.
“Life tossed me some curveballs recently so I've got to deal with them and the way I’ve dealt with them and the way I’ve dealt with things in the past when I was fighting is unlike anything where I would have dealt with them like before,” he continues. “I feel like I’m on a real path to becoming the person and having the life I want to have. I can’t wait. I feel like there’s been a lot of big lessons learned. Just going through all these experiences outside, because the cracks outside of life always end up affecting boxing more than boxing itself because boxing itself is not an easy thing but it’s a simple thing. You get up, you work hard, you put your work in, you eat right, you eat clean, you do everything properly and if you’ve got the talent and if you get things right on the night you’ll win or you’ll not. Things outside of boxing, if you let them spill over into your boxing life, that’s what ends up making the cracks and that’s when you fall down. That’s where a lot of boxers fall, because of outside things. Not because of inside boxing. I’ve learnt to deal with all them, navigate around them cracks and little portals. I feel like I’m in the perfect place.”
There have been times when Kelly has been written off, and he knows that. He knows why, too. He suffered an early blemish on his record when he drew with Ray Robinson in New York, and then he suffered his lone loss in his on-off bout with David Avanesyan in 2021. Despite a dazzling start, Avanesyan caught up with Kelly and Booth threw in the towel.
In Robinson’s previous fight, the American had earned a respectable draw with Terence Crawford foe Egidijus Kavaliauskas and it was only Kelly’s 10th bout in the pros. Kelly had also suffered a broken hand in the weeks that led up to the contest, and he had needed time off and painkilling injections.
He also admits he required an emotional maturity he did not yet have. Then there was a struggle with the scales, and that became worse, with Kelly sometimes needing to lose more than 12lbs on the day of the weigh-in. That meant the Josh Kelly the world saw in social media highlight reels was often a depleted version when he stepped into the ring.
Through it all, though, he stayed with Booth. Plenty of fighters come and go, leaving their coaches at the first sign of trouble, but Kelly says that through the shared trauma and lows – as well as the highs – he and Booth have grown closer.
“Sticking with Adam through it, all that,” Kelly adds, “He’s got to know me better and I’ve got to know him better and he’s like family. He’s become really close. When you start to really trust someone or you’re going into war with them, then that’s the best place you can be. That’s the best person you can have in your corner. I don’t want someone who’s just saying, ‘He’s a good fighter,’ [coming for] a quick pound note. I want someone who’s there through the ups and the downs and just sticking by us because I’m doing the same with Adam. You learn a lot about each other. He’s closer than a coach to me.”
The relationship between coach and fighter is not restricted to the gym. They have a shared passion for golf. Kelly has played off a handicap as low as seven, but more importantly, he’s found an often-frustrating pastime, one that allows him to switch off from the noise, negativity, and distractions.
Asked how important golf has become to him, Kelly says: “Massively. Because here it gets a load of steps in, you do loads of walking outside and if I’m not doing that, what am I doing? I’m sat on the sofa. I’m eating my food and just watching TV or on my phone. I’m not burning any calories. Plus, you just switch off. You’re just hitting the ball. You’re talking with your friends or Adam... I recommend anyone take it up because it just helps your mind. You can’t be thinking about anything else and that just takes your mind away from everything. When I’m boxing, I just forget about everything. I’m just boxing. When punches are coming, I’m just like moving, slipping and moving. If I have anything in my mind where I’m stressed at anything, I always say, ‘Adam, can I spar?’ When I’m in the ring, I stop thinking and it just helps. I just move. It’s like medicine.”
It was overthinking things, in part, that caused Kelly’s rise to stagnate.
He could feel himself becoming “like a hypochondriac” and would relentlessly be washing his hands and keeping everything clean. It took years to break that cycle, and now he happily claims he is “the opposite” of that.
“I’ve just learned to not to give a fuck, you know what I mean?” he explains. “Like, not really caring about too many opinions, not really caring about anyone’s opinion and just like, you’re here for maybe, hopefully – god willing – 70, 80, 90, maybe if you’re lucky 100 years, right, and then we’re gone and then everything’s forgotten and then even if you were a legend or you were a big star or you were the best at this sport, you’re not going to remember because you’re going to be dead. It’s like, it was lovely at the time but we’re all going to be dead. When the fight happens, people talk about it for maybe a week max, and then it’s gone, it's forgotten about, moving on to the next one. That’s what I think, like I’m not bothered anymore. If I got sick tomorrow and I pull out of this fight, I’d go, ‘I don’t give a fuck, my health is more important than that.’
“Obviously that’s never going to happen but I’m just in that mindset where now it’s like, I’m not bothered, I just gotta go in there, do my thing, train as hard as I can because I love training hard, sparring hard, and enjoy it. The result will take care of itself. What it’s going to be, it’s going to be.”
When Kelly turned pro following the 2016 Olympics, many tipped him for world honors.
He travelled to Rio with Joe Joyce, Joshua Buatsi, Galal Yafai, Joe Cordina, Lawrence Okolie, and Pat McCormack.
“I think it’s been pretty good, if you think about where they got to, where they are, where their names are and stuff, it’s been decent really,” he says, reflecting on the crop’s success in the pros. “I haven’t really thought about that that much, just because when I turned pro, I thought to myself that it was now solo operations… I was like, ‘Right, this is my plan now, I’m not part of no team, it’s me.’ So that’s why I never really had the time to think… Interesting question, I have to go back and look at other Olympians and other Olympic titles and how their athletes were compared to ours and stuff like that.”
Kelly has recorded 16 wins against a loss and a draw, but admits he has learned far more about the sport and himself from the two blemishes on his record. The Avanesyan defeat signalled his acceptance that he needed to move up in weight. On reflection, Kelly “sees a ghost” of what he is now against Avanesyan.
“I’m filled up, I’m a lot bigger, I’m a lot more experienced, I punch a lot harder, I can tie you up and hurt you, I can lose you inside if I want to,” Kelly said. “And looking at that today, that downfall, it’s just like I’ve sort of scrubbed that off my record and my mind.”
Against Biea on Friday, Kelly hopes to offer another reminder of his skills and the potential he has yet to fully demonstrate.
He anticipates Biea coming at him and that the visitor will fight like he has nothing to lose. Kelly had not heard of his challenger before the fight was made, but said: “It’s his world title fight, so I’m going to get my mind right. I’m going to put him up there like he's fucking [Gennady] Golovkin or someone and I’m training for that guy.”
For someone who has struggled with the issues Kelly has, including the hypochondria, is it a concern that the fighter who trades on speed and reflexes is now in his thirties? Those qualities are said to be the first things to go.
“I’m not one of them where I’m delusional,” he says. “I’m not old. I’ll feel it in the gym, and when it goes, I’ll be like, ‘Right, listen, I don’t know if I’ve got to either change my style totally, or I’m going to have to really rethink this boxing stuff, because I’m not there to get fucking hit.’ But I still believe I’ve got till 33, 34, and then I’ll think, ‘Okay, then that might start to dip,’ because I was a late maturer anyways. I didn’t get hairs under my arms till I was like 17, so I was a late maturer, and I feel as if I haven’t run the clock down outside of boxing or in boxing, so I’ve got a lot of years left. If I want them anyways.”
Tris Dixon covered his first amateur boxing fight in 1996. The former editor of Boxing News, he has written for a number of international publications and newspapers, including GQ and Men’s Health, and is a board member for the Ringside Charitable Trust and the Ring of Brotherhood. He has been a broadcaster for TNT Sports and hosts the popular “Boxing Life Stories” podcast. Dixon is a British Boxing Hall of Famer, an International Boxing Hall of Fame elector, is the author of five boxing books, including “Damage: The Untold Story of Brain Trauma in Boxing” (shortlisted for the William Hill Sportsbook of the Year), “Warrior: A Champion’s Search for His Identity” (shortlisted for the Sunday Times International Sportsbook of the Year) and “The Road to Nowhere: A Journey Through Boxing’s Wastelands.” You can reach him @trisdixon on X and Instagram.