Unified world heavyweight champion Anthony Joshua has revealed he considered quitting the sport during his early days as an amateur.

The 30 year-old won silver at the world championships in 2011 before triumphing at his home Olympic Games in 2012.

And while he has now gone on to become not only a world champion as a professional but also one of the biggest stars in the sport, he has admitted it could have been a very different story.

Speaking on Instagram, he said: "I got so many stories. I was at GB Boxing, I used to train at Finchley maybe, what, three times a week, we used to train Monday, Wednesday, Friday.

"I used to think, 'Yeah, that's enough'. You know what I'm going to do, I'll win the ABA's, turn pro and all that malarkey, it was just a simple route.

"Then I learned about GB Boxing, and I was like, 'What? There's Olympic boxing? What's all this about?' Remember, I was only boxing amateur for three and a half years.

"So I've coming through and I've trained four times in one day, they used to make me train four times a day.

"I was like you know what f*** this. I was ready to leave GB Boxing, this s**t ain’t for me.

"But what I realised is that as long as this s**t isn't going to kill me, I can always come back tomorrow, right?

"So that's what I said, I said I'm going for broke and I had that mentality and that's where Stay Hungry came from. You gotta' stay hungry, stay motivated."

Joshua is due to face IBF mandatory challenger Kubrat Pulev later this year after their original date of June 20 was postponed due to the coronavirus pandemic.

The Brit has also reached a ‘financial agreement’ with fellow countryman Tyson Fury for two huge heavyweight fights in 2021.

Since turning pro in 2013, Joshua has won 23 of his 24 fights including beating the likes of Dillian Whyte, Wladimir Klitschko, Joseph Parker and Alexander Povetkin.

His only defeat came against Andy Ruiz Jr in June last year when he was stopped inside seven rounds.

But he avenged that loss by regaining his heavyweight title belts in Saudi Arabia at the end of 2019 with a comfortable points win.