ANTHONY JOSHUA has admitted that he will have to be lucky against Jarrell Miller on June 1 if he is to retain his heavyweight world title belts.
Joshua will travel to Madison Square Garden to defend his WBA, IBF and WBO heavyweight straps against hard-hitting Miller.
It is the first time that the Brit has fought outside of the UK, and the star is deep into training camp for the bout.
The Londoner originally planned on taking on either Tyson Fury or WBC champion Deontay Wilder, however he was forced to take on Miller after negotiations failed with the pair.
Whilst those fights will still be there for Joshua later in the year or early in 2020, Joshua will need to get through 23-0-1 Miller first.
Speaking on his Youtube channel, Joshua admitted that he is not expecting an easy touch, and is preparing to be “lucky”.
“It’s going to be a tough fight,” he said. “No fight is easy.
“No matter how much you train, you’ve just got to get lucky.
“What we’re training for now is to get lucky.
“You dodge a punch that could have hurt, connect with a punch that’s going to hurt him.
“When they say ‘all in the bank’ it’s putting it all in the [memory] bank, and June 1 I’m going to have to check into my reserve account.”
Wilder had reportedly been offered upwards of £100million to face Joshua, but revealed that the deal offered by DAZN was not right for him.
However, he insisted that he will still unify with Joshua in a blockbuster showdown.
“It won’t be difficult for me to make those fights with Fury and Joshua,” Wilder reiterated.
“I’m betting on myself. I move as I please. Those guys, they have to do as they are told. I make commands and demands. They take them. That’s the difference between me and them. I’m like the wild card in all this. I move where I want. I can move freely.
“Soon I will be the highest paid athlete in the world. If no one believes it, just watch. You’ll see. The DAZN deal wasn’t right.
“You can’t do a deal if you don’t know the other parts of the deal. If information is withheld from you, how can you proceed further?
“I want to fight those guys. I want to see one champion, one face, one name. I want to see it done the right way, the fair way. We can go away and say we did it, we can hug it out, and we can go back and support our families.”