Anthony Joshua Survives Two Knockdowns to Stop Prenga, Fury Next

Anthony Joshua was supposed to walk through Kristian Prenga in Jeddah on Saturday. Instead he spent the opening round on the canvas twice, staring at the kind of upset nobody in Saudi Arabia had priced in. AJ, now 29-4 with 26 knockouts, gathered himself and closed the show in the second, sparing his reputation and keeping a much bigger fight on track.

The chaos matters because of what's waiting. This was a tune-up designed to tee up the long-delayed showdown with Tyson Fury, and Fury did his part a night earlier, forcing a seventh-round retirement out of Mariusz Wach. Both men are now through their assignments. The all-British heavyweight fight everyone's been chasing for years is finally in reach for later this year.

Joshua hadn't fought since December, when he stopped YouTuber-turned-boxer Jake Paul in the sixth round. That was his most recent win, and it came at the end of a brutal stretch away from the ring — a car crash late last year killed two of his close friends. The layoff and everything around it may explain some of the rust that showed up in that first round against Prenga.

Paul Sends His Regards

Paul, the last man to share a ring with Joshua, didn't let the moment pass. Posting on social media, he congratulated AJ on the win and pointed to what Joshua had been through, name-checking Sina and Latz in tribute. It's an unusually gracious note from a fighter whose brand is built on the opposite, and it landed better than most of his ring work has.

For context, Paul sits at 12-2 with just seven knockouts across his run — a résumé that got exposed the moment a genuine heavyweight in Joshua closed the distance. That loss remains the most instructive fight on his ledger, and it's why his praise here carries a little more weight than usual.

Fury, ranked #3 at heavyweight with a 36-2-1 record and 25 stoppages, is the prize now. The Wach retirement wasn't a statement performance, but it doesn't need to be — the only thing that mattered was staying unbeaten in the tune-up and preserving the payday. He did.

The knockdowns will fuel the doubters, and fairly so. A former unified champion getting dropped twice by an unheralded opponent isn't a great look heading into the biggest fight of his career. But Joshua got up, adjusted, and finished. In heavyweight boxing, surviving the scare and still landing the knockout is its own kind of answer.