Former world champion boxer Anthony Joshua says watching Ilia Topuria lose to Justin Gaethje at UFC Freedom 250 pushed him to step back from social media and treat the fight game with renewed seriousness.
Speaking about the lightweight title unification bout between Ilia Topuria and Justin Gaethje, Joshua explained that the champion’s defeat and the visible damage he sustained were a turning point for him. The fight, which saw Topuria stopped by doctor intervention after four rounds of brutal stand‑up exchanges, left the Georgian‑Spanish star marked up and bloodied as Gaethje’s pressure, jab and power shots accumulated damage. Joshua said: “When I watched that Ilia Topuria fight, I stopped replying to people. [The fight game] is not a joke. You saw his face, it’s not a joke.”
Anthony Joshua Opens Up on Why Ilia Topuria’s Loss Hit Different
He went deeper on the mindset shift, pointing to how heavily favored Topuria had been going into the White House bout. “The odds were in his favor. Not that it was a bad thing, but I saw him celebrating before. He didn’t tell us what he would do once, but I just took something from it, and I said, ‘Get back to being uncontactable. Be less accessible because the fight game is so serious. You saw his face. What he went through is not a joke, man. It’s not a joke.”
Joshua framed his comments around the reality of damage and risk that elite fighters live with every time they compete. Gaethje, a 28‑5 lightweight with a history of high‑impact wars against names like Dustin Poirier, Max Holloway and Charles Oliveira, dragged Topuria into extended exchanges where every clean shot altered the course of the fight. For Joshua, seeing an unbeaten champion who had finished Alexander Volkanovski, Max Holloway and Charles Oliveira now suffer that kind of loss reinforced how quickly momentum and health can turn at the top level.
“I think you’ve got to be in the fight game to truly know it’s not. It is not all people think it is. It’s not all fun and games. It’s a serious, serious, serious job, man,” Joshua said. He linked Topuria’s rise, including wins over opponents who had previously beaten Gaethje, to the shock of seeing that narrative flipped in one night. “When I watched that Ilia Topuria fight against Justin Gaethje, I stopped replying to people after that because I said, ‘Yo, it’s not a joke.’ I saw someone in Ilia who was destined to win. The stars were aligned for him to be victorious. I think Ilia had beaten people that Justin had lost against.”
Joshua will return against unbeaten Albanian heavyweight Kristian Prenga in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, on July 25, in a scheduled 10-round contest. Prenga brings a 20-1 record with 20 knockouts, while Joshua enters at 29-4 with 26 stoppages; it will be his first bout since his September 2024 defeat to Daniel Dubois. The Prenga fight is designed to prepare Joshua for a proposed late-2026 meeting with Tyson Fury, with reports pointing to November and Netflix as the intended broadcast home. Joshua vs. Fury has been described as agreed in principle, though both fighters must first come through their summer commitments before the long-awaited all-British heavyweight fight can take place.
