Kristian Prenga was battling illness, he was not bribed, says his manager
Kristian Prenga’s manager Keith Sullivan has dismissed the ludicrous claims that his fighter was offered a bribe between rounds one and two of Saturday’s fight with Anthony Joshua.
According to Sullivan, the sole reason for Prenga’s fade was an illness he’d suffered in the build-up which took him out of camp for two weeks before the fight.
Prenga, 20-2 (20 KOs), dropped Joshua twice (though Sullivan insists there were three knockdowns) in the opening round and seemed on the brink of a sensational upset. But Joshua, 30-4 (27 KOs), gained control in the next session before knocking Prenga through the ropes and out with a mighty right hand.
Sullivan told TalkSport that the “conspiracies” about Prenga throwing the fight were impossible.
"There were two conspiracies. One was that Turki [Alalshikh] had come over to our corner,” Sullivan explained.
"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.”
Prenga was merely exhausted and out of ideas after his surprise start, his manager insisted. Sullivan explained that Prenga had been in bed for eight days in the lead-up before being moved to Dubai where he was seen by a doctor.
"In the first round, he came out and just gassed himself out,” he said. “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 [before the fight], when he was gasping for air and had no energy.
"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.”
Prenga came into the contest as a 20-to-1 underdog, with no amateur experience, and never having fought world-class opposition before. Sullivan promises that lack of experience, alongside his depleting energy levels, were key.
"So, Kristian's figured [at the start of the second round], '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.
"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 [Joshua's promoter] 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.”
