Former heavyweight world champion Anthony Joshua survived a trial by fire before beating Albania’s Kristian Prenga in Jeddah in the early hours of Sunday and talk immediately turned to Joshua’s long-awaited all-British bout with Tyson Fury.
Expected to win with relative ease, Joshua survived two shocking first-round knockdowns before slamming a series of punches to Prenga’s head in the second round to leave his opponent lying dazed on the bottom rope, halfway out of the ring, where he was counted out by the referee.
“Those moments show what type of person you are because they’re not things that we prepare for. You know, deep in your heart, you will come in life to a minute, at a moment, at a second, where you need to click it to get,” Joshua, 36, told reporters.
“And there was a flight-or-fight moment, and I chose to fight. Now, we had some big plans on the horizon, there’s been a lot of talk around this Tyson Fury fight. Is it (going to happen)? Where is it? When? And it nearly got stripped away from us within three minutes, and I said, ‘no, no, no, no’.”
With the 37-year-old Fury having secured a warm-up win of his own on Friday, Joshua and his promoter Eddie Hearn moved quickly to quash the rumours buzzing around the boxing world that the battle between the iconic British heavyweights might take place outside the United Kingdom.
“Not unless you want to renegotiate the contract,” Hearn said bluntly.
“We insisted that this fight was in the U.K. and I know that AJ, you know, will sometimes want to be a little bit of a peacekeeper, but the reality is that he said to me, ‘I want the fight in the U.K. This is a British fight’. I can’t agree more.”
Boxing fans, and particularly those in Britain, have long lusted after a meeting between the two heavyweight giants, and though both of the former world champions are now ageing and on the down-slope of their careers, the appetite for a clash at London’s Wembley Stadium remains high.
“Let’s be honest, this is a fight for the British public… this is something that will be remembered across all generations, forever,” Hearn said.
“There’s nothing I need to do to make the fight – the fight’s signed, the fight’s made, so we’ll see what the next couple of weeks bring.”
