Anthony Joshua: natty or not?
Likely natty Two-time unified heavyweight champion, 2012 Olympic gold medalist
Short answer. Verdict: likely natty. At the peak physique on this page, Anthony Joshua is 6'6" (198 cm) and 254 lbs (115.2 kg) at roughly 11% body fat. That works out to an FFMI of 25.1, against the ~25 mark cited as the natural ceiling.
No official record settles this. What follows is opinion and analysis based on public numbers — how we judge.
The numbers (estimated)
| Peak physique | Unified-champion bulk (2017), around 254 lbs |
|---|---|
| Height | 6'6" (198 cm) |
| Weight | 254 lbs (115.2 kg) |
| Body fat | ~11% |
| FFMI | 25.1 — ~25 is the cited natural ceiling |
Era by era (estimated)
| Era | Year | Age | Weight | Evidence | Body fat | FFMI |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Professional debut | 2013 | 24 | 230 lbs (104.3 kg) | reported | ~9% | 23.1 |
| Unified champion bulk | 2017 | 28 | 254 lbs (115.2 kg) | reported | ~11% | 25.1 |
| Rebuilt, post-Ruiz | 2019 | 30 | 237 lbs (107.5 kg) | reported | ~9% | 23.9 |
| Later career | 2023 | 34 | 256 lbs (116.1 kg) | reported | ~12% | 25.0 |
FFMI over time (estimated)
FFMI per era (values in the table above). Hover a point for details.
Note. Every number below is a fight-week figure or our own photo read, not a measurement. See the methodology page for how we judge.
Anthony Joshua is the physique boxing purists complained about — a “bodybuilder heavyweight” — and the math says the complaint was about aesthetics, not chemistry.
The numbers
At 6’6” (198 cm), his fight-night weights have run 230 to 256 lbs (104-116 kg) across a decade. Height normalization does serious work at his altitude: even his biggest, leanest championship build computes to an FFMI around 24.5-25 — the top of the natural bands, not past them — and his softer recent builds sit near 24. The timeline behaves too: he started boxing at 18, added his mass through his early-to-late 20s (the years the natural model allots for exactly that), and has oscillated rather than grown since — deliberately rebuilding smaller after the Ruiz loss, drifting bigger later. No new-territory jump past 30, no improving-with-age.
The context is stronger than most of this site’s athletes: Olympic program testing to 2012, then UKAD and VADA regimes around his title fights, no positives ever, and an on-record stance that a doping bust is worse than a loss — said while agreeing to fight a former offender. Boxing’s testing has famous gaps between camps; it is still testing, passed for fifteen years.
Verdict
Likely-natty. Normalized math inside the bands, mass added on the natural schedule, a real testing history, and a public position that staked his legacy on it. The tripwire is the standard one for aging heavyweights: a leaner, bigger Joshua in his late 30s would reopen arithmetic that, so far, closes cleanly.
In their words
“I would rather take a loss than be done for doping, because that is worse for your legacy than taking a loss.”
Common questions
Is Anthony Joshua natty or on steroids?
This site rates Anthony Joshua as likely natty. That is an opinion drawn from public numbers, not a statement of fact: the peak physique on this page works out to an FFMI of 25.1, against the ~25 mark cited as the natural ceiling.
Has Anthony Joshua ever failed a drug test or admitted to using PEDs?
Nothing of the sort turned up in the sources on this page. Had it, the verdict would read confirmed instead of likely natty.
What is Anthony Joshua's FFMI?
About 25.1. That comes from 6'6" (198 cm) and 254 lbs (115.2 kg) at roughly 11% body fat, normalized to 1.8 m. Drug-free lifters in the Kouri 1995 study topped out near 25.