{"id":455698,"date":"2026-02-05T15:22:08","date_gmt":"2026-02-05T15:22:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/455698\/"},"modified":"2026-02-05T15:22:08","modified_gmt":"2026-02-05T15:22:08","slug":"deontay-wilder-urges-anthony-joshua-to-stay-strong-after-death-of-friends","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/455698\/","title":{"rendered":"Deontay Wilder urges Anthony Joshua to &#8216;stay strong&#8217; after death of friends"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;So from another brother to another brother &#8211; stay encouraged, Anthony Joshua. Keep your head up, Anthony Joshua.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;Stay prayed up, bro, because you&#8217;ve still got life.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Wilder, who fights Briton Derek Chisora on 4 April in London, said the crash brought up &#8220;old feelings&#8221; from the death of his cousin, who was killed in a car accident.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;It&#8217;s tough to find the words to tell a person, but know that you are in our prayers,&#8221; Wilder said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;My words may not mean anything in this moment in time. Maybe later on.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;I don&#8217;t know where he is mentally, emotionally, physically or spiritually, but I know that I will advise him to stay strong.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Despite being long-time rivals, former heavyweight world champions Joshua and Wilder never shared the ring.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">A proposed undisputed title fight collapsed in 2018 when Wilder held the WBC belt and Joshua was the WBA, WBO and IBF champion.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">At a news conference on Wednesday Wilder discussed mental health struggles caused by issues in his personal life and said the &#8220;fire&#8221; is still in him as both he and Chisora prepare for their 50th professional fight.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;After two therapists and sports psychologists, here I am reinventing myself, reuniting myself. I know I&#8217;m back,&#8221; Wilder said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"&#8220;So from another brother to another brother &#8211; stay encouraged, Anthony Joshua. Keep your head up, Anthony Joshua.&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":455699,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[447],"tags":[703,49,48,82],"class_list":["post-455698","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-boxing","tag-boxing","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/455698","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=455698"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/455698\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/455699"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=455698"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=455698"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=455698"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}