{"id":710342,"date":"2026-07-25T10:33:08","date_gmt":"2026-07-25T10:33:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/710342\/"},"modified":"2026-07-25T10:33:08","modified_gmt":"2026-07-25T10:33:08","slug":"joshua-vs-prenga-prediction-predictions-for-heavyweight-fight-from-fighters-and-pundits-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/710342\/","title":{"rendered":"Joshua vs Prenga prediction: Predictions for heavyweight fight from fighters and pundits"},"content":{"rendered":"

Anthony Joshua returns to the ring on Saturday against the relatively unknown Kristian Prenga in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, knowing that victory would set up a long-awaited showdown with Tyson Fury.<\/p>\n

Joshua, a two-time world champion and Olympic gold medallist, has won 29 fights – 26 by stoppage – and lost four. <\/p>\n

Albanian Prenga enters the fight with an impressive record of his own, having achieved all of his 20 victories with stoppages while suffering only one defeat.<\/p>\n

However, the 35-year-old has never faced anyone close to Joshua’s level.<\/p>\n

After Fury comfortably dispatched Polish veteran Mariusz Wach<\/a> in Thailand on Friday, can Joshua can come through his own warm-up bout?<\/p>\n

This will be Joshua’s first fight since he was involved in a car crash in Nigeria that claimed the lives of two close friends, Sina Ghami and Latif ‘Latz’ Ayodele.<\/p>\n

The Fury-Joshua fight has been a decade in the making. Contracts have been signed, with the blockbuster bout expected to take place later this year.<\/p>\n

But could Prenga spoil the party and pull off a huge shock to go down in boxing history as the man who got in the way of Joshua-Fury happening?<\/p>\n

Radio commentary from Jeddah will begin from about 20:30 BST on BBC Radio 5 Live, BBC Sounds, and the BBC Sport website and app.<\/p>\n

Live text commentary will begin at 19:30 on the BBC Sport website and app.<\/p>\n

BBC Sport spoke to figures from the boxing world to get their predictions for Saturday’s fight.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Anthony Joshua returns to the ring on Saturday against the relatively unknown Kristian Prenga in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":710213,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[41],"tags":[2560,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-710342","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\/710342","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=710342"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/710342\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/710213"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=710342"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=710342"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=710342"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}