Old enemy of Anthony Joshua does not believe his punch resistance has gone

Anthony Joshua getting dropped early by Kristian Prenga does not mean his punch resistance has gone, says his old arch enemy Dillian Whyte.

Joshua was widely expected to walk straight through huge underdog Prenga last weekend but instead walked straight into an uppercut in the first 20 seconds and found himself on the canvas. He was dropped again in the opener before emphatically knocking out Prenga in the second.

It was Joshua’s first bout since he was involved in a traffic accident that killed two of his closest friends last December.

There has been debate about whether Joshua, 30-4 (27 KOs), came back too soon. Plenty, however, have merely surmised that Joshua – at 36 years old – is showing the wear and tear of his illustrious career.

"Prenga might not have been the best boxer in the world, but he could punch," Whyte told Sky Sports.

Whyte, in 2015, had Joshua in trouble during their British heavyweight title fight only to be flattened in the seventh.

"In boxing, anybody can get knocked down. I've been knocked down multiple times in different fights,” Whyte continued.

"It's kind of hard to say if his punch resistance is gone, you know, I think it's more mental than punch resistance.

"I think he's in a place mentally where he's been through a lot.

"AJ is not my friend, we don't like each other per se, so you know, I'm just being honest.

"I think it's that it was the nervousness and mentally not being ready for the kind of fight that Prenga brought to him in the early rounds."

The bottom line is that Joshua got the win. What comes next is the much-discussed showdown with Tyson Fury who, at 37, is also exhibiting signs that his best days have long gone.

“Potentially, both men could hang up their gloves after the fight,” Whyte said of Joshua-Fury.

“When it's done, they might say, listen, we've done everything, Tyson's won all the belts, AJ's been a unified world champion, they might just say, yeah, that's it.

"I think they might both hang up their gloves after and then it'd be a sad day for boxing."