Latest updates on Anthony Joshua’s next fight, including expected opponent, return date, location and what comes next,
Sport is very good at moving on. The record books do not pause for personal loss. The rankings do not carry footnotes about what a fighter was carrying when he stepped through the ropes. You win or you lose, the scorecards are submitted, and the calendar advances to the next event regardless of what was happening in the life of the person at the centre of it.
Anthony Joshua is returning to boxing in the summer of 2026. That sentence is factually straightforward. What sits behind it is not straightforward at all.
DECEMBER 29, 2025
Joshua had just knocked out Jake Paul in Miami ten days earlier — a sixth-round stoppage on Netflix that was clean and professional and that silenced a considerable amount of the noise that had built up around him following consecutive losses to Oleksandr Usyk and a fourth professional defeat against Daniel Dubois in September 2024. The mood in his camp was optimistic. A return fight in the spring and then the long-awaited Fury showdown in the summer was the plan being discussed.
On December 29, a vehicle carrying Joshua and members of his team was involved in a serious crash on a motorway in Nigeria. Two people were killed — his strength and conditioning coach Sina Ghami, and his trainer Latif Ayodele, known as Latz within the camp. Both had been central to Joshua’s professional operation for years. These were not peripheral figures. They were the architecture of how he prepared, how he approached the physical demands of the sport, how he built himself up for the biggest nights of his career.
Joshua was taken to hospital and treated for injuries that were, physically, not serious. Everything else was.
HOW HE HAS RESPONDED
In the weeks that followed, Joshua chose to speak publicly about the loss with a directness that stripped away every layer of careful public-image management. He talked about Ghami and Ayodele not as colleagues but as the people most central to his professional life. He said he had been walking alongside people he had not fully recognised as the giants they were while they were there. He said the only response that made sense to him was to continue — to carry their work forward rather than abandon the journey they had committed themselves to helping him complete.
The language was simple. The weight behind it was visible every time he spoke.
His promoter Eddie Hearn, who has known Joshua throughout his professional career, confirmed in February 2026 that everything about the original plan had changed. The March comeback was gone. The August Fury fight was gone. Joshua was not yet in full training camp. He had been in a gym, early sessions, the beginning of a physical rebuilding process. But a proper fight camp — the structured, intense preparation that professional boxing at his level demands — had not yet begun.
Hearn confirmed that the working target was a return sometime in July 2026, while being clear that nothing would be forced and that no date would be set until Joshua came back to camp and demonstrated he was ready. He said only at that point would it be possible to have a real conversation about opponent and timing.
THE RETURN AND WHAT COMES NEXT
No opponent for Joshua’s comeback has been confirmed. The names most credibly attached to the discussion include Dillian Whyte — an opponent Joshua has already met twice, with a natural storyline available for a third meeting — and Rico Verhoeven, the Dutch kickboxing champion who has been building a boxing profile and whose name was raised at the post-Paul press conference as a possibility being considered.
What is settled is that the Fury fight is not next. Hearn has been unambiguous on that. The mega-fight — reported by Gareth A Davies on talkSPORT as agreed in principle behind the scenes, disputed by Hearn in its current signed status — belongs to a later chapter. Late 2026 is the most optimistic realistic window. Early 2027 is more likely given the variables on both sides.
The broader picture is that Joshua is now entering, in Hearn’s own framing, the final stage of his professional career. The promoter has said publicly that 2026 will probably be the last year, though circumstances may extend that into 2027. There are likely three more fights at most. The Fury match is the one that makes the most sense as the final destination. The question is whether the road between here and there can be navigated without another significant setback.
THE BIGGER QUESTION
What nobody can answer yet — and what every conversation about Joshua’s next fight eventually circles back to — is what version of him the sport is going to see when he returns.
He is 36. His professional record stands at 29 wins and 4 losses. The losses to Usyk, and the manner of the Dubois stoppage at Wembley, raised genuine questions about where he stands against the elite tier of the heavyweight division that a knockout of Jake Paul, for all its clean professionalism, did not fully resolve.
What has changed since December is not his record. It is his reason. He is returning to the ring carrying the memory of two people who gave their professional lives to helping him reach the heights he has reached. He has said, publicly and clearly, that continuing is the right thing to do — for them, for their families, and for himself.
Whether that translates into performances that put him back in genuine contention for a world title or a meaningful Fury result is a question only the fights themselves will answer. But when he steps through those ropes again this summer, it will be one of the most watched returns British boxing has staged in years.
Not because of the record. Because of the road.
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