Anthony Joshua Survives Two Knockdowns, KOs Prenga to Tee Up Fury

Anthony Joshua nearly walked into a disaster before he authored a rescue. Facing Kristian Prenga in Jeddah on Saturday, the former unified champion was floored twice inside the opening round, then climbed off the canvas to score a second-round knockout and move his record to 29-4 (26 KO). It's the kind of round-one horror show that ends careers, and instead it became a talking point about his recovery.

The win keeps Joshua's collision course with Tyson Fury intact. Fury handled his own tune-up on Friday, stopping Mariusz Wach by seventh-round retirement to improve to 36-2-1 (25 KO). With both men through their assignments, the long-teased all-British heavyweight showdown is now expected to be confirmed for later this year.

Bellew Calls It Chaos

Ringside for the mess was former cruiserweight world champion Tony Bellew, who admitted the round-two finish had been forecast but the path to it hadn't. Bellew described the fight as chaos, noting Joshua never saw the first uppercut coming and found himself on the floor with no idea how he got there. The second knockdown, he said, AJ at least spotted, tightening up on the jaw as it landed.

Bellew's sharper point was about what happened after. He argued Joshua used his experience to tie Prenga up and stall the momentum, something he simply couldn't do against Andy Ruiz back in 2019 when panic took over. And he pushed back on the lazy chin narrative: getting up from that kind of damage, Bellew reckons, is about conditioning, not granite.

The Finisher Question

There's a stat buried in Bellew's praise worth sitting with. He called Joshua the best finisher in the division when he hurts a man, claiming he's never seen AJ drop an opponent and let them survive, Ruiz aside. The numbers back the ruthlessness up, at least in part: 26 of Joshua's 29 wins have come inside the distance. The problem has always been the opposite direction, and Prenga just exposed that vulnerability all over again.

So the good news for Joshua is he won, he got the highlight-reel recovery, and the Fury fight is still very much alive. The bad news is that anyone building a game plan around him just got fresh footage of AJ hitting the deck twice against a fighter no one had him losing to. Fury's team will have watched every second of it.

Whether that shaky opening round matters in a marquee bout depends entirely on how you read it. Bellew sees resilience and improved fight IQ. A cynic sees a chin that keeps getting found. Both things can be true, and both will be argued about right up until the first bell against Fury.