Mexican cuisine, sleep, mediation or alcohol deprivation, at 42 and to last at the highest level, Tony Yoka’s opponent respects a very rigorous way of life.
When you have the audacity to ask Carlos Takam about his age and the 1.87m colossus looks at you and asks you in return: “I am old, me ?”, you inevitably feel very small. The heat stroke disappears immediately when the French heavyweight accompanies his words with a smile that lights up his face and his bleached blond beard. Fierce in a ring, Tony Yoka’s opponent at the Zénith de Paris on Saturday evening (on Canal+ from 10:30 p.m.) is, indeed, a man who laughs a lot. And whenever he gets the chance.
Laughter is perhaps part of the secret surrounding longevity among the heavyweights of the native of Douala, twelve years older than his compatriot. “I don’t know what this secret is. Maybe sleep a lot, don’t drink and smile. Laughter removes wrinkles», Jokes the boxer with 47 fights (39 wins and 7 losses) for almost two decades in the heavyweight category.
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Armand Carlos Netsing Takam, his birth name, obviously has other tricks up his sleeve to manage to stay among the gratin of the queen category. Because despite its 42 springs, it remains a rock on which many opponents have broken or are still breaking their teeth. A “bag of cement” in which one of the stars of the category, the Briton Anthony Joshua typed without stopping without really finding a solution, at the end of 2017, in a Homeric fight which he ended up winning.
Tony Yoka will face Carlos Takam at the Zénith de Paris on Saturday evening. FRANCK FIFE / AFP
Good genes and two hundred-year-old grandmothers
«You also need a perfect lifestyle, but I also have to thank my parents. I have very good genes. My grandmother who lives today is 117 years old. On his birth certificate, he wrote about 1906… but we don’t know the day or the month of his birth. And my other grandmother, who died, was 103 years old“, explains the one who lives in the United States, a country where it is sometimes difficult to resist temptation. “It’s not easy because there are too many fast foods. I only shop at a Mexican supermarketAdds the fighter who places great importance on mental preparation.
An area that he works as much as his physical condition since he only trains a month and a half before each fight. No more. “Two and a half months of preparation? I would be a little bored“, he decides. “I do personal meditation and yoga, not the stuff you see on TV. This is all bullshit!“says the boxer before detailing:”I meditate asking myself questions: “Who am I?”, “What do I want to do?” and “what can I do?”… I ask these questions deep inside me. Some people claim that they meditate by closing their eyes for an hour but that is not real meditation. Without meditation there would be no life for me.“A work on oneself that will necessarily have to be put aside when entering the ring and challenging the French Olympic champion.