By Eric Bottjer

If you didn’t know Anthony Joshua and Kristian Prenga, and you watched their fight Saturday night with the sound off, you would have pegged Prenga the “A-side.” He was compact, as compact as someone 6-foot-5 can be, played defense, floored his man twice and dictated the fight.

Until he didn’t. Until Joshua, despite his lack of defense or even any reaction to Prenga’s blows other than flinching on their impact, showed that he was, in fact, the A-side, and ended that argument with one titanic right.

Prenga, a 20-1 underdog, can walk proud. And he’ll get another six-figure payday.

But what of Joshua?

Joshua himself doesn’t seem to know who he is anymore as a fighter, despite outwardly emoting confidence. Nobody who switches trainers as often as he does is sure of himself. He also hadn’t won a fight with a legitimate professional boxer in 31 months. And he’s only had one 50-50 type match in four years, and he was brutally knocked out then.

Joshua turns 37 in three months. He is fabulously wealthy and, so far, has not deteriorated into a sad case mentally or financially. On the surface, he doesn’t need to box. And the future for any 37-year-old boxer is never bright, apologies to Bernard Hopkins and George Foreman. What awaits Anthony Joshua is another beating.

And, if you believe Joshua’s promoter, Tyson Fury awaits. It’s debatable if Fury, who’s 37 right now, is the man to administer AJ’s beating. Fury, like Joshua, hasn’t won a 50-50 fight himself in nearly five years.

He fought Friday night, against 46-year-old Pole Mariusz Wach, in Pattaya, Thailand. Nobody saw it, including basically everyone in Pattaya. The venue held just 1,500. No platform showed the fight live. You can catch highlights on Fury’s Netflix reality series. I was told Fury won in seven rounds.

Although numbers won’t be released by DAZN, Joshua-Prenga also had a pitiful audience. The show was pay-per-view. I don’t know anyone in the boxing world who bought it. Certainly, no casual fan paid.

With Joshua still adrift on who he is inside the ring, don’t expect him to retire anytime soon. His identity for his entire adult life has been as a boxer. That’s a hard turn to make for an exit, when you’re not satisfied with who you are in the world where you identify yourself.

Joshua’s popularity is cloaked in the image of a successful boxer, a devastating knockout artist. If he retired now, it’s what would mostly be remembered about him. Highlight-reel knockouts. A wonderful win over an aging Wladimir Klitschko. A huge fan base that filled soccer stadiums.

Here’s what also will be remembered about Joshua, should he call it a day. He avoided his main rivals. He not only dodged Fury, but Deontay Wilder as well, so much so that Wilder and Fury fought each other three times, all of them memorable punchouts which elevated each man above Joshua.

Yes, Joshua fought Oleksandr Usyk, but only because he thought Usyk was too small to win. Check out Usyk’s own documentary on YouTube on the first Joshua fight and note how Joshua and his crew mocked Usyk, who they obviously deemed a non-threat.

When Usyk beat Joshua in the rematch, we saw a true version of Joshua. Shell-shocked the fight didn’t go his way, Joshua stormed from the ring before returning and snatching a microphone from Usyk, as well as the champion’s Ukrainian flag, rambling on about pressures and expectations. It was very uncomfortable, and very human. Joshua couldn’t control Usyk, and this was the hour where Joshua lost his identity as a fighter. He has yet to find his way out of this dark room, Joshua.

Tyson Fury knows who he is. He, too, lost twice to Usyk. Unlike Joshua, he can argue he won at least one of those matches. Fury gives the energy that he wants to fight Joshua a bit more than Joshua wants to fight him. And yet, one gets the impression that if Fury lost such a fight, it wouldn’t affect him at any level. He’s comfortable with the questionable Usyk decisions, his wins over Wilder in epic fights. The first paragraph of his obit is already written.

Not so with Joshua. If he fights Fury and loses, Joshua will be remembered as the man who lost twice to the two best men he faced. And avoided the other. He will be this generation’s Frank Bruno, a thundering puncher with obvious flaws that prevented him from beating the best of his generation. A man packaged into popularity, yet not reaching the admiration the British public had for Bruno, who was so humanly flawed that the average fan lived and died with him when he fought.

If Fury wanted to score the harshest victory over Joshua, he’d retire. Leave Joshua, and whatever would be left of Joshua’s fans, with eternal “what ifs” as well as the blame for him not stepping to his biggest challenges. But the Gypsy King is a fighter and he loves the spotlight and the money. If Fury-Joshua doesn’t happen, it won’t be because of Tyson Fury.

And I suspect that Joshua, even without his old confidence, will brave the risk of cementing his legacy as second-best by agreeing to the match. Despite the bubble he’s existed in since turning pro, what is revelatory about him has come in his losses. He cares and he’s shown world-class heart. If he goes down, he’ll go down firing.