A damaged 18-wheeler truck from a road accident that reportedly involved British boxer Anthony Joshua is towed away on the Lagos-Ibadan Expressway near Sagamu on December 29, 2025. Former world heavyweight champion Anthony Joshua suffered “minor injuries” in a fatal car accident that killed two people on December 29, 2025, Nigerian police said.
Pictures circulating online showed a shirtless Joshua, a British national of Nigerian heritage, surrounded by what appeared to be broken window glass on the seats around him.
An AFP reporter on the scene saw the 18-wheeler truck that Joshua’s car was said to have hit being towed off the highway.
| Photo Credit: AFP
Anthony Joshua, the Nigerian-British boxer and former world heavyweight champion, was involved in a car accident that killed two other passengers in Nigeria on Monday.
The Lagos state commissioner for information, Gbenga Omotoso, confirmed the accident in a post on X, adding that the government had sent ambulances to the crash site. Local media reports say the boxer has been transferred to a hospital.
According to a statement by Olusegun Ogungbemide, spokesperson for the Federal Road Safety Corps, preliminary investigations indicate the vehicle “to be travelling beyond the legally prescribed speed limit on the corridor, lost control during an overtaking manoeuvre and crashed into a stationary truck,” which was by the side of the road.
The Ogun state government said in a statement that “preliminary reports indicate that two male foreign nationals died on the spot”. AP has not been able to independently verify their identities.
Photos on social media show the boxer being extricated from a wrecked vehicle while he was wincing in pain.
The accident occurred on a major thoroughfare linking Ogun state, a nearby city, to Lagos, the country’s economic center.
“Anthony Joshua is in an undisclosed hospital being treated for his injuries,” Lanre Ogunlowo, the commissioner of police for Ogun state, told the AP. He said he has no further information on the injuries.
Nigeria is the homeland of Joshua’s parents and where he briefly went to boarding school at the age of 11.
Joshua had recently beaten YouTuber-turned-boxer Jake Paul on Dec. 19 in a bout in Miami, which he was using to regain sharpness in the ring ahead of an attempt to reclaim the world heavyweight title, which he lost in 2021 to Oleksandr Usyk.
He has been in talks to fight fellow Briton Tyson Fury in 2026.
Published – December 30, 2025 02:04 am IST
