Josh Warrington exclusive diary: I’m gonna give the fans a hell of a performance
I’ve got this French boy, Sofiane Takoucht, on October 12th. For all the latest fight odds, visit our sportsbook.
I’m obviously very disappointed that I couldn’t get any of the other featherweight champions in the ring. Oscar Valdez is saying he’s moving up in weight now after getting his mandatory ordered against Shakur Stevenson. Leo Santa Cruz wasn’t entertaining it even though he’d said previous that he’d happily fight me. You never see anything of Gary Russell Jnr. That’s where we are.
It’s frustrating. After beating Selby, Frampton, and Galahad you’d have thought that that would be it. I promised people that it’d be a Stateside trip next and if not that then a unification but it’s proven harder to do than we’d have hoped.
I had a bit of a sulk and it probably got me down a bit if I’m totally honest. I’m desperate for that big fight. I need to test myself against a big name and then I’ll be happy.
Can you imagine me against Oscar Valdez going toe to toe?
I’m over it now. I’ve decided to concentrate on winning every fight that gets put in front of me. We had to pick somebody from the top ten and now it’s about showing that it’s my title. I’m staying busy and racking the defences up. This will be my 30th fight and it’ll mark ten years as a pro. It’s my third title defence too so I think I get one of those nice special rings from the IBF after this one.
Preparation has been on point. No fighter is ever going to say that they’ve had a bad spar or that things aren’t going smoothly but when I look back at the last camp for Galahad and compare it to this one there are absolutely massive differences between where we were then and where we are now. I thought I felt good leading up to the fight but when you compare it to this one it’s totally different.
Maybe as a team we got a little bit complacent – not in effort – but we gave up a lot of time for promotional duties. In the build up to Selby and Frampton my dad wouldn’t have let it happen but in that one we let them get away with it. We missed a few sessions and moved a few things around and it just didn’t suit our schedule. We sat down before this fight and agreed that boxing got us to this position and we can’t be letting anything get in the way. No matter how big the TV networks or companies are, our career comes first. We changed all that around. Everything is back to how it used to be and it’s paid dividends.
I did some filming for 32Red recently and the video will be out soon. Leeds were playing Barnsley the day we were filming. I went to Barnsley last season but couldn’t go this time. I went to Derby about five weeks before the Galahad fight. We scored and everybody went mad. I had people swinging off my head. They don’t do it intentionally but it’s just passion and you get carried away yourself. People were picking me up and throwing me about all over and afterwards you think, ‘F****** hell, it were a bit dangerous that.’ You go and get a drink at half time and there’s no water and you can only get a pie to eat. Then you get stuck in traffic for ages getting out.
On Saturday, I’m gonna give the fans a hell of a performance. They’re gonna get the fight they should have got in May against Galahad and then we’ll see what happens after that.
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