Kristian Prenga was ill and did not train for two weeks before he lost to Anthony Joshua, according to his manager.
Albanian heavyweight Prenga knocked AJ down on two occasions in the first found on Saturday night but was beaten late in the second.
Joshua delivered a burst of shots to knock his opponent down and onto the ropes, saving him from what looked set to be a shock loss.
His victory has set up a highly-anticipated all-British clash with Tyson Fury, which is expected to take place before the end of 2026.
talkSPORT’s Simon Jordan revealed on X that he was ‘not having’ the fight against Prenga, and said there was ‘something not quite right’.
There has also been speculation over potential outside influences, but Prenga’s manager Keith Sullivan has set the record straight and revealed that the fighter was unwell in the lead-up to the bout.
Prenga manager dismisses foul play talk
On Drive, presenter Ade Oladipo asked: “Can we just clear up all the conspiracy theories, that say Kristian Prenga was almost sent out in the second round not to throw hands, not to try and win the fight?”
“We can clear those up very easily in one word, impossible,” Sullivan insisted. “There were two conspiracies. One was that Turki (Alalshikh) had come over to our corner…
“You were there, Ade, Turki was not even in Jeddah, so that never happened. That’s gone, throw it away.
“The other conspiracy was that somebody from Sela or Matchroom had come and whispered in our corner. Look at the footage, that never happened.
“I’ll tell you what happened, and this is the first time I’m mentioning this, this is the first time anybody from Team Prenga is mentioning this, and we had no intention of ever discussing this.
“I had a little team meeting on a conference call this morning and I felt that, because of the conspiracy theories that were floating, I had to go down this road and I didn’t want to go down this round because…
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“Everybody I deal with in boxing, I’m a person that believes in responsibility and accountability, and accept the outcome of things, and we do.
“But, what happened here was Kristian had gotten very sick leading up to the fight. He didn’t spar or train for two weeks before he got to Jeddah.
“He had a 102 (degrees Fahrenheit) fever and he was in bed for eight days straight… he moved camp over to Dubai, he brought a doctor in, drew some blood to make sure there wasn’t something more serious going on.
“They said he was just run down and they thought it was a flu or cold, or something, and he would get over it. It took 14 days, so we had the last seven days before we went to Jeddah for training. We had a sparring partner there in Dubai who we didn’t use at all… we couldn’t get him out of bed to go for a walk.
“In the first round, he came out and just gassed himself out. The instructions in the corner for the second round were, ‘Continue what you’re doing, keep the pressure on, keep pumping the jab and when you have the opportunities, take him’.
“Kristian stood up off the stool to start, when that bell rang for the second round, and he said to me he felt like he was back in that bed that he was in for eight days, when he was gasping for air and had no energy.
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“He was stunned with what happened, in an instant. He said it all came right back to him. The lack of training, lack of cardio that he wasn’t able to do in the three weeks leading up to it, they caught him right at that moment.
“So, in his head, he kind of changed the game plan from what he was instructed to do. He said to himself, ‘I’ve got AJ’s number, I’ve knocked him down three times’… I don’t care what anybody says, it was three knockdowns, those ropes held him up, absolutely, in between the two counted knockdowns.
“You see his body flop back, if those ropes aren’t there, he’s flat on his back and Kristian Prenga has knocked the two-time Olympian, three-time heavyweight world champion on his a** three times in the first round.
“And, Anthony Joshua is going into the second round 10-6 down, that’s never happened in his life… it was 10-7 because they didn’t count the third knockdown, but accepting 10-7, I don’t think he’s ever gone into a second round down 10-7, the pressure was clearly on AJ.
“So, Kristian’s figured, ‘I have his number, I can just land my shot when I’m ready to, let me preserve some energy, let me stay away, let me back up a little bit’. And that’s the slither… that goes to the talent and the skillset of AJ, that’s the tiny, tiny opening of the door that AJ needed to kick it wide open and just take over.
“That’s what happened, and Kristian said once AJ started working that jab and he started feeling that power, it was hard to now implement his own game plan, and we saw what happened.
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“But, there was no… again, I’m not making excuses, I think it was the most exciting five-and-a-half minutes of boxing that I’ve witnessed in a very long time.
“I think Eddie Hearn got a lot of grey hair sitting ringside, I think the Matchroom people have indigestion probably still, to this day. But that’s what happened, he was feeling the effects of a poor camp and being sick, he thought he could execute against AJ at any point in time.
“He let off the gas and gave him that opening, and AJ just did what AJ does when a talented and skilled, high level, very experienced fighter does.
“Remember, Kristian has no amateur experience, forget about even trying to compare him to AJ, he’s got zero, never had an amateur fight in his life.
“The only fights he’s had are the pro fights, just 22 of them now and he’s 20-2, and a lot of his fights don’t go many rounds.”
