Amir Khan and Anthony Joshua seem to have buried the hatchet after the former accused the British heavyweight of having an affair with his wife.
Joshua, who has been enjoying a break from the ring following elbow surgery, recently embarked on luxury trips to Oman, Dubai and Saudi Arabia. The 35 year old Brit was given a hero’s welcome in Ghana, where he was mobbed by fans upon arrival.
The ex-two-time heavyweight world champion flew out to Ghana to attend Khan’s inaugural boxing show as a promoter. Khan hopes this event will act as a springboard for future global promotions.
In the main event, Andrew Tabiti triumphed over Jacob Dickson.
However, the highlight of the event was seeing Joshua and Khan appearing quite friendly with each other, nearly a decade after Khan alleged on social media that Faryal Makhdoom had been unfaithful to him with Joshua, reports the Mirror.
Joshua refuted the allegations at the time, posting: “Bantz aside, I hope you guys can resolve your situation, or this is a hack as we have never even met! Plus, I like my women BBW (sic).”
Khan promptly informed his followers that the messages were not the work of a hacker. “Everything you saw on social media today is real,” he stated.
“Nothing’s been hacked. But yeah, what’s done is done. Everything I posted on social media today was true,” he added.
Khan and Makhdoom’s marriage hit a rocky patch after an 80-minute Twitter spat led to a brief separation, but love triumphed as they mended their relationship. Reflecting on the 2019 incident before his bout with Terence Crawford, Khan admitted to ESPN: “It was a made-up message. A lot of people were making all these fake messages saying that ‘Joshua messaged your wife and she messaged him back.'”.
He continued, “Then I posted it on social media and said, ‘This has happened and it’s true. And I’m calling it over. She’s no longer my wife.’ I did feel bad, I did feel stupid at the time but the damage was done. I made that mistake in tweeting something and putting it out. I was just digging a deeper and deeper hole. I remember I went to see Faryal. I apologised. I said, ‘Look, I don’t know what went through my head.’ And I totally changed my ways, changed the way I am.”
Years later, Khan expressed regret for dragging Joshua into the drama during a chat with Gary Neville on The Overlap, saying, “I had the problem with Anthony Joshua, which I feel awful for, because at the end of the day. But I put him in the firing line for no reason,” and lamented, “I mean, he was a friend of mine. Since then, we’ve never spoken. So I lost a good friend through that as well.”
Now, there are signs of thawing relations between Khan and Joshua, who hasn’t stepped into the ring since his defeat by Daniel Dubois last year. Eager to make a comeback, Joshua may face Dillian Whyte or Jared Anderson, as suggested by promoter Eddie Hearn.
When asked about Joshua’s future, he said: “For me, if I’m advising AJ, we’re back this year, we have two Tyson Fury fights, what else is there to do? ,
“Maybe fight a Daniel Dubois, but for me once AJ fights Tyson Fury, he’s kind of done it all. I’d love him to have another crack at Daniel Dubois and I’d love him to have another crack at Usyk but you just keep going on and on and on. In an ideal world, we’d like to fight in November/December and then have two Tyson Fury fights in 2026. It was gonna be Dillian Whyte, probably, but looks like he’s fighting Moses [Itauma]. Jared Anderson, Deontay Wilder, I don’t know.”
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