Anthony Joshua gave a blunt assessment after his victory over Jake Paul on Friday, claiming it was a win, but not a success and that he needed to do better.
Joshua (29-4, 26 KOs) found it hard to land punches against Paul (12-2, 7 KOs) who ran and moved in the opening rounds, with little action at the start of the fight.
He was widely expected to knock Paul out in the opening two or three rounds but Joshua struggled to corner the YouTuber-turned-boxer in Miami.
However, when his punches did connect, Paul soon discovered the gulf in class and power as he was dropped three times on the way to the stoppage in Round Six.
Despite eventually getting the win, Joshua was not altogether happy with the performance.
"No, I needed to do better. I needed to do better," Joshua said.
"It's a win, but it's not a success. I think my coach expects more from me and I expect more from myself. But what can we do? I have to move forward.I have to put that in the past now. After today, you may see a bit of social media ... but for me it's in the past.
"I can't live off that win, I've got a lot of improvement I need to do."
Joshua was full of praise for Paul, who had just 13 professional fights going into the event, after the fight but reminded him there are levels to the sport.
"Jake done well while it lasted ... But fighting is not just physical it's psychological, and when you understand the psychological warfare, I did say to [Paul]: 'What's going to happen is I'm going to see a time when I'm going to take your soul and you're either going to give up or get knocked out.'
"And unless you have that instinct, you just will never be a good fighter. I wish I could have knocked him out at the start, but as we saw, Jake has spirit. He has some heart and I take my hat off to him."
"No. 1, a lot of fighters haven't got in the ring with me and Jake did. And secondly, even when he got knocked down, he kept trying to get up."
