Anthony Joshua suffered two knockdowns — the first just twenty seconds in — before recovering to stop Kristian Prenga in the second round of his comeback fight in Jeddah, a result that keeps alive a long-awaited meeting with fellow Briton Tyson Fury.

"That was spirit. That was Latz, that was Sina, that was the families." — Anthony Joshua

The 36-year-old was fighting for the first time since the December car crash in Nigeria that claimed the lives of his close friends Sina Ghami and Latif 'Latz' Ayodele. He was rocked by a huge uppercut from the unfancied Prenga in the opening round and hit the canvas again later in the frame, leaving him on the verge of one of the biggest shocks in heavyweight history and the Fury bout hanging by a thread.

But Joshua produced one of the great escapes of his career. He unleashed his right hand in the second round, and the final shot sent the Albanian crashing down and forced the referee to step in. Choking up at the microphone afterwards, he dedicated the performance to the friends he lost and stepped away before composing himself.

Joshua's return had always carried more weight than a routine ranking bout. The crash, and the grief that followed, reframed a comeback already freighted with expectation. A clean stoppage against a game opponent does not erase the loss to Daniel Dubois, but it answers the question of whether he could still summon the killer instinct under pressure — and in front of him now is the fight the public has wanted most.

Fury faces Poland's Mariusz Wach in Thailand on Friday, and is expected to be Joshua's final opponent before the two meet. Given how close Joshua came to defeat, both camps will treat the buildup as anything but a formality, and the heavyweight division suddenly has a storyline worth the wait.

Beyond the result, the contest will be assessed for what it reveals about form, fitness, and the margins that separate the very best when the stakes are highest.

The wider calendar now comes into focus, with coaches and analysts already projecting how this performance shapes the narrative heading into the next fixture.

In the dressing room, the mood swings between relief and resolve, the kind that follows a result that could have gone either way until the final moments.

Rivals will have noted the vulnerabilities exposed under pressure, filing them away for the rematches that the season's structure all but guarantees.