Topuria's shock UFC defeat prompts Joshua to cut himself off before Prenga fight

Anthony Joshua has overhauled his pre-fight routine after Ilia Topuria’s corner-stoppage defeat to Justin Gaethje at UFC Freedom 250, cutting off unnecessary contact with people and making himself deliberately inaccessible ahead of his July 25 bout with Kristian Prenga at Jeddah Superdome in Saudi Arabia.

Topuria, a heavy favourite going into the lightweight title defence, was nearly finished in the second round before Gaethje turned the fight around, piling up damage across the later rounds until Topuria’s corner pulled him out before the final frame. It was the first professional loss of the Georgian’s career.

Joshua (29-4) told Combat Evolved that the result hit him hard and triggered an immediate change in behaviour. “I think you’ve got to be in the fight game to truly know; it’s not lit,” he said. “It’s not what people think it is. It’s not all fun and games. It’s a serious, serious job. Stay away from people who just want to get lit and get upset when you don’t return calls and stuff. It’s not personal. When I watched the Ilia Topuria fight, I stopped replying to people after that. Because I said, ‘Yo, it’s not a joke.’”

The British heavyweight was careful not to condemn Topuria directly, but drew a clear lesson from reports that the former two-division champion had been celebrating the night before the fight — a pattern Joshua said he had noticed across previous camps. “I saw someone in Ilia who was destined to win,” Joshua added. “The stars were aligned for him to be victorious. I think Ilia had beaten people that Justin had lost against; the odds were in his favor. Not a bad thing, but I saw him celebrating before. He’s entitled to do what he wants, but I just took something from it and I said, ‘Get back to being uncontactable, less accessible, because the fight game is so serious.’ You saw his face, what he went through. It’s not a joke.”

Joshua now turns his full attention to Prenga (20-1), the unbeaten Albanian prospect he meets in Jeddah on July 25. The fight represents another step in the former two-time world heavyweight champion’s bid to rebuild his career following back-to-back losses to Daniel Dubois and Oleksandr Usyk.