The former manager of light heavyweight contender Joshua Buatsi says it was difficult to plot out a robust fighting schedule for his ex-charge because of the fighter’s risk-averse trainers.

London’s Buatsi, whose career has been plagued by inactivity, recently cut ties with his longtime promoter, Matchroom, and his advisory group, 258 Management, to start his career anew with Boxxer, the promotional entity that acts as the chief content provider for Sky, the UK broadcaster.

Buatsi made headlines during a press conference earlier this month to announce his new deal by citing the various issues he had with his former handlers, especially his promoter, Eddie Hearn. Buatsi spoke at length about feeling as if he was languishing under Matchroom and being concerned that he was no longer visible to a large swath of the British public by fighting on DAZN, the streaming app. Buatsi also took issue with the fact that there would be strings attached in the form of a contract extension if he accepted a career high payday to challenge WBA light heavyweight titlist Dmitry Bivol.

Buatsi is scheduled to fight Pawel Stepien at Genting Arena in Birmingham. It will be the 30 year old's first fight in a year.

Will Harvey, the head of 258, stated in a recent interview that there was considerable philosophical disagreement between his team and Buatsi’s trainers in guiding Buatsi’s career. Buatsi has been trained by veteran Rob McCracken and is currently under the stewardship of Virgil Hunter. The Oakland, California-based trainer is best known as the coach of Hall of Famer Andre Ward.

Indeed, Hunter has publicly indicated that he does not believe his charge is quite ready to take on Bivol, the WBA light heavyweight tilist, until he has had a few more fights under his belt.

“Definitely frustration on both sides,” Harvey told SecondsOut.com. “I was always going on to Josh about the need to get some momentum back into his career. Part of it is unlucky. We had the whole Covid situation so he only boxed once in 18 months. He had an injury just prior to the lockdown where a fight got cancelled.”

“His coaches—which he’s had very experienced, old school coaches, the brilliant Virgil and Rob McCracken previously,” Harvey continued. “These are the kind of guys that don’t really like to take a risk because they have quite an old school mentality in terms of how they want to progress a fighter. So there was an element of battling against them to kind of get the kind of opponents in that we wanted to, maybe they wanted to take things more slowly. There were a combination of things.”

If it is world titles Buatsi is after, it is not immediately clear how he expects to do so under his new promotional agreement, given that Boxxer's offerings at light heavyweight appear somewhat meager. At the same time, while a showdown with Bivol seems unlikely anytime soon, there could be a path for him to face WBO, WBC, IBF light heavyweight champion Artur Beterbiev. The Russian knockout artist is promoted by Top Rank, which often collaborates with Boxxer.

Harvey says Buatsi will now have little room for excuse to turn down significant fights, given his age and high position within the various sanctioning organizations.

“Josh and I both shared the frustration that we couldn’t get him out as we would have liked,” said Harvey. “Hopefully now that’s all changed. He’s at a stage in his career now where you can’t be that picky against your opponent because you’re ranked at the top of most of the [sanctioning] bodies now. There’s only one stop where you’re heading, and that’s a world title shot.

"You can’t be fussy about opponents now. He’s injury free. The Boxxer schedule is packed, so I don’t envision there being problems anymore and hopefully.”