On December 29, Joshua was injured in a car accident in Nigeria that claimed the lives of two of his close friends. Sina Ghami and Latif “Latz” Ayodele had been members of the British heavyweight team for most of “AJ”’s professional career, and their deaths have sparked much speculation about Joshua’s fighting future.
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However, Joshua, 36, returned to the gym two weeks later, after attending Ghami and Ayodele’s funerals and before posting an emotional video message to his fans.
In that video, the former two-time world champion did not address his future in the ring, but his promoter Hearn continued to answer questions about the matter.
“I don’t think there are any guarantees that he will fight again, but at the same time I hope he does because it’s something he loves,” the Matchroom boss told First Round TV.
“And it’s something he can take those guys with him too, and it’s something he wants to do. From a boxing standpoint, physically what happened wasn’t easy either. People probably don’t realize the extent of that.
“He has been training, but he is not ready yet and won’t be for a while to return to (full) boxing training.
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“Before this terrible incident, we were prepared to fight in March and then fight Tyson Fury. Obviously that is not happening now, and I don’t know if it will ever happen now.
“But I think in the coming weeks and months, he can start to come back and just up the level of training a little bit more and see where he is at.”
Joshua’s accident, in which he and his friends were passengers on the Lagos-Ibadan expressway, occurred just 10 days after the Brit fought Jake Paul in Miami.
Joshua pictured with his promoter Eddie Hearn (PA File)
Joshua stopped the YouTuber-turned-boxer in six rounds, breaking the American’s jaw to bounce back from a KO by Daniel Dubois in 2024.
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As Hearn said, there were plans for AJ to set up a long-awaited internal showdown with Fury, but those plans were drastically affected by the December incident.
Still, Fury will emerge from the fifth retirement of his career when he boxes in April, facing Russian Arslanbek Makhmudov somewhere in the United Kingdom.