Twenty seconds. That is all it takes for a comeback fight to become a catastrophe. In Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, on Saturday night, a thunderous right uppercut from Albanian underdog Kristian Prenga sends Anthony Joshua crashing to the canvas before the crowd has even settled into their seats. The arena falls silent.

Joshua smiles as he rises — a reflex, perhaps, or defiance — but the danger is far from over. Later in the same round, he hits the canvas again, and suddenly one of the biggest upsets in heavyweight history appears to be unfolding in real time. Then something shifts. Joshua, 36, who has been carrying the weight of personal grief since a car crash in Nigeria last December killed two of his closest friends, Sina Ghami and Latif Latz Ayodele, finds something deeper than technique.

In the second round, he begins to unload his right hand with growing authority. The final shot sends Prenga down hard, and the referee waves it off. A chaotic six minutes of boxing ends in one of the most dramatic recoveries the heavyweight division has seen in years. "It's more than punch power," Joshua says at the ringside microphone, his voice breaking.

"That was spirit, that was Latz, that was Sina, that was the families." He steps away, unable to continue, before adding quietly: "It's my brothers. I don't want to talk about it." Both men's names had been written on the canvas beneath him throughout the fight, alongside the words 'My Brother's Keeper'.

The victory keeps alive the long-awaited showdown with Tyson Fury, who was signing his own contracts barely 24 hours earlier after a warm-up win over Mariusz Wach in Thailand. Fury did not attend — he had promised he would not, and for once the self-styled 'Gypsy King' kept his word.