Joshua has been through losses before. He\u2019s been stopped, hurt, embarrassed in big\u00a0 fights. He came back from those. This is different. You don\u2019t bounce back from watching two people close to you die in a crash you survived. The sport asks fighters to compartmentalize everything. Ignore doubt, ignore pain, ignore the voice saying it\u2019s not worth it. That works until something happens that can\u2019t be ignored.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat happened to him is not normal and it\u2019s heartbreaking for everybody involved, particularly the families of Sina and Latz, who were so incredibly loved,\u201d Hearn told Sky. The families got mentioned second. That\u2019s how these things go. The fighter is the story, even when he shouldn\u2019t be.<\/p>\n
The heavyweight picture without him<\/p>\n
Joshua hasn\u2019t held a real title in years. He\u2019s been a name, a draw, someone who still sells tickets because people remember what he was. But the division moved on. Usyk beat him twice. Dubois knocked him out. Fury\u2019s fighting for legacy scraps. If Joshua walks away now, it doesn\u2019t leave a gap in the title picture. It just removes one more fight people were still willing to pay for.<\/p>\n
\u201cI do think he\u2019s going to want to return to boxing, but that\u2019ll be his decision when the time\u2019s right,\u201d said Hearn. Maybe. But wanting to and actually doing it are separate things. The sport doesn\u2019t care about timing. Fights get made when they make sense financially, not when a fighter feels ready. If Joshua takes six months, a year, the fights that were there might not be anymore. Dubois could lose. Fury could retire. The moment passes.<\/p>\n
Hearn said Joshua needs his time \u201cphysically and mentally, emotionally, spiritually before he makes a decision on his future.\u201d That\u2019s a lot of qualifiers for someone who used to just show up and fight. Fans don\u2019t wait. Promoters don\u2019t wait. The heavyweight division keeps turning, and fighters who step away usually stay away.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Joshua has been through losses before. He\u2019s been stopped, hurt, embarrassed in big\u00a0 fights. He came back from…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":371080,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[41],"tags":[2560,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-371079","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-boxing","tag-boxing","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/371079","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=371079"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/371079\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/371080"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=371079"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=371079"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=371079"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}