Future Awards: I’m honoured-Joshua

World Heavyweight Champion Anthony Joshua has been presented with the prestigious Future Awards Africa in London, after his unification battle for the Heavyweight title, against Joseph Parker, Sportinglife.ng reports.

The award was earlier collected on his behalf by Dr Rafiu Ladipo, the President of the Nigerian Boxing Board of Control (NBB of C) and Khomeini Bukhari, of Peel Aston Global at a gala ceremony in December 2017.

Joshua received the award immediately after his recent world heavy weight unification win, the presentation was done by Ben Gray the Nigerian Boxing Board of Control‘s Marketing Manager in the UK and Sky Sports boxing pundit, Spencer Fearon.

Speaking after receiving the award, the newly unified heavyweight champion said, “I am humbled to receive this coveted award, especially with the knowledge that it was as a result of the votes I received from the general public”.

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Beaming with joy as he picked up the award, AJ as he is fondly called said: “I am deeply honoured to have been recognised by Nigeria in this way”.

Joshua was also extremely pleased to have been given a portrait by Khomeini Bukhari the same evening, Khomeini Bukhari is the man who has brought a host of high level V.I.P’s which includes Governors, Ministers and billionaires to Anthony’s fights.

The portrait, drawn by young artist Stephen Korede, and was commissioned by Bukhari and his team showing Joshua sitting in the guise of a traditional Yoruba King, displaying his four world Heavyweight Champion’s belts.

Also speaking during the presentation Bukhari said, “I commissioned the picture ahead of the unification clash, as I was so confident that Joshua would win, I asked the artist to make sure all the belts were pictured, Anthony was very pleased with the result.”

The Nigerian based businessman also added that he is determined that Nigeria should work hard to deliver its own champions, under the fantastic leadership of President Ladipo and he is working hard to help the likes of Larry Ekundayo and Lawrence Okolie deliver on their immense talents.

“We are working on something very big, I have already delivered a signed glove to His Excellency, Asiwaju Tinubu and we will be reaching out in the near future to Nigeria’s leading businessmen, to deliver something quite magnificent for the country and the continent as a whole,” he added.

The Future Awards Africa (previously known as The Future Awards), are a set of Awards given by The Future Project (TFP), a social enterprise communications firm affiliated to Red Africa. The awards celebrate young people between the ages of 18 and 31, who have made outstanding achievement in the year under consideration.

Forbes has described the awards as “Nigeria’s most important awards for outstanding young Nigerians”.