LAGOS: Former world heavyweight boxing champion Anthony Joshua has been discharged from hospital, government officials said Wednesday, after surviving a 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 and Ibadan in the South West of the country when their SUV rammed into a stationary truck.
According to the Nigerian police, he suffered minor injuries.
Preliminary investigations showed that the vehicle was traveling at excessive speed and had burst a tire before the accident, said the Traffic Compliance and Enforcement Agency (TRACE) in Ogun State, where the accident occurred.
“Anthony Joshua was discharged from hospital late this afternoon”, spokesmen for the Lagos and Ogun state governments said in a joint statement late Wednesday night.
“Though he was heavy-hearted and emotional over the loss of his two close friends, he was deemed clinically fit to recover at home,” said Lagos State Speaker Gbenga Omotoso and his Ogun counterpart Kayode Akinmade.
Both state governments have been monitoring the treatment of the two-time world heavyweight boxing champion since the crash on Monday.
After leaving the hospital, Joshua and his mother paid their respects at the funeral home where the bodies of his friends were “prepared for repatriation”, the statement read.
Nigerian police said the two victims died at the scene.
Missing wreckage
Ghami was Joshua’s long-time strength and conditioning coach, while Ayodele was his personal trainer, according to British media.
A Nigerian newspaper, The Guardianquoted a senior police officer as saying that the driver of the car had also been discharged from hospital and was being questioned by police.
The paper added that the driver “could be prosecuted for reckless driving”, but gave no further details.
Joshua, 36, was admitted to Lagos’s Lagoon Hospital, the joint statement said, contradicting earlier information by a TRACE official who gave the name of another hospital.
The boxer, a British national whose family hails from south-west Nigeria, is known to visit the area when in the country.
Lagos, Nigeria’s bustling economic capital, teems with visitors from across the country and diaspora every December.
Pictures released by police showed the mangled wreckage of a black sports car.
In December, Joshua knocked out YouTuber-turned-boxer Jake Paul in a Netflix-backed bout in Miami.
Former Olympic champion Joshua has since been linked with a fight against compatriot and former world champion Tyson Fury.
Joshua’s last fight before the fight with Paul was a fifth-round knockout loss to Britain’s Daniel Dubois in September 2024.
