Joshua’s family hails from South West Nigeria and is known to visit there when in the country. Photo: AFP/File
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Former world heavyweight boxing champion Anthony Joshua has been released from hospital, state authorities said Wednesday, after surviving a fatal car crash in Nigeria that killed two of his close friends.
Joshua was on Monday traveling with friends Sina Ghami and Latif Ayodele on a busy highway connecting Lagos to Ibadan in the southwest of the country when their SUV rammed into a stationary truck.
The Traffic Compliance and Enforcement Agency (TRACE) in Ogun State, where the accident occurred, said preliminary investigations indicated that the vehicle was speeding and had a flat tire before the collision.
“Anthony Joshua was discharged from hospital late this afternoon,” representatives of the Lagos and Ogun state governments said in a joint statement late Wednesday night.
“Though heartbroken and full of emotion over the loss of his two close friends, he has been deemed clinically fit to recover at home,” Lagos state representative Gbenga Omotoso and his Ogun counterpart, Kayode Akinmad, said.
Both state governments are overseeing the boxer’s treatment from the accident on Monday.
After leaving the hospital, the former heavyweight champion and his mother paid their respects at the funeral home where the bodies of his friends were “being prepared for repatriation,” the statement said.
Nigerian police said the two victims died at the scene.
Joshua, 36, was admitted to Lagos’s Lagoon Hospital, the statement said, contrary to earlier information from a TRACE official who gave the name of a different hospital.
Joshua’s family hails from the southwestern Nigerian city and is known to visit there when in the country.
Lagos, Nigeria’s bustling financial capital, teems with visitors from across the country and the diaspora every December.
Photos released by police showed the mangled wreckage of a black sport utility vehicle.
In December, Joshua knocked out YouTuber-turned-boxer Jake Paul in a fight in Miami sponsored by Netflix.
Former Olympian Joshua has since been linked with a fight against fellow countryman and former world champion Tyson Fury.
Joshua’s last fight before the Paul fight was a fifth-round knockout loss to fellow Briton Daniel Dubois in September 2024.
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