Joshua survives knockdowns, sets up long-awaited Fury showdown
Joshua was dropped twice in the first round, then stopped Kristian Prenga in Jeddah, keeping the Fury megafight alive but exposing fresh flaws.
Anthony Joshua survived two first-round knockdowns and stopped Kristian Prenga in the second round at the Jeddah Superdome, a chaotic win that kept the Tyson Fury fight moving but also showed how much damage Joshua can still absorb. The first knockdown came after just 20 seconds, and the victory lifted Joshua to 30 wins and four defeats.
The result mattered because Joshua and Fury had already signed for a future bout under Riyadh Season plans for 2026, with Prenga cast as the warm-up fight. Joshua’s meeting with Prenga was shifted from Riyadh to Jeddah in June, and the final pre-fight press conference was streamed two days before the bout, with Joshua billed as facing unbeaten Albanian knockout artist Kristian Prenga on July 25.
That setup now looks different after Joshua was forced to recover from the early knockdowns before turning the fight around. Matchroom Boxing said the comeback "clears the path" for the Fury megafight later in the year, but the performance also gave promoters and broadcasters a new problem to sell and a new risk to manage. The long-delayed Joshua-Fury pairing has been one of boxing’s most repeated near-misses, and the latest round of buildup had already been framed around whether the two heavyweights would finally meet after years of false starts.
The location remains part of that calculation. Plans had pointed toward Riyadh, then Jeddah, and Wembley Stadium has emerged as another option if authorities agree to a later start time that works for the American audience. Turki Alalshikh has said Wembley could host the fight, while Sadiq Khan has backed plans to bring it to London. The United Kingdom is viewed as the frontrunner, but the United States and Saudi Arabia remain in play.
Joshua also entered the ring carrying the memory of two friends killed in a car crash, a detail that shaped the comeback narrative around him. Against Prenga, though, the story was less about sentiment than survival. Joshua won, but he did not look invulnerable, and that is exactly what makes the Fury fight harder to assess. The knockdowns added drama to a bout that already carried huge commercial weight, yet they also raised the basic sporting question that has followed Joshua for years: whether the biggest night in British boxing will be sold as a genuine elite heavyweight clash, or as an event built around the possibility of another scramble.
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