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Former heavyweight champion Anthony Joshua is sharing his first public message since a car crash in Nigeria claimed the lives of two coaches who were also close friends. (AP Photo\/Lynne Sladky)<\/p>\nFormer heavyweight champion Anthony Joshua is sharing his first public message since a car crash in Nigeria claimed the lives of two coaches who were also close friends. (AP Photo\/Lynne Sladky)<\/p>\n
By The Associated Press<\/p>\n
LONDON (AP) \u2014 Former world heavyweight champion Anthony Joshua issued his first public update on Jan. 4 following the car crash that killed two of his friends in Nigeria.<\/p>\n
Joshua posted a picture on his Instagram account of him sitting on a couch with his mother and three other women, one of whom is holding a photo on her lap. Joshua wrote \u201cMy Brothers Keeper\u201d on the caption along with two hearts.<\/p>\n
British media reported on Jan. 3 that Joshua had returned to Britain ahead of the funerals of Sina Ghami and Latif \u201cLatz\u201d Ayodele, which were reportedly held the following day.<\/p>\n
They died after the vehicle they were traveling in along with Joshua struck a stationary truck on a major road near Lagos on Dec. 29.<\/p>\n
Joshua sustained minor injuries and the two-time heavyweight champion was released from a hospital on Dec. 31 after being deemed fit to recover at home.<\/p>\n
Ghami was Joshua\u2019s strength and conditioning coach while Ayodele was a trainer. Just hours before the crash, Joshua and Ayodele posted clips on social media of the pair playing table tennis together.<\/p>\n
The driver of the car, Adeniyi Mobolaji Kayode, was charged on Jan. 2 with dangerous and reckless driving, with the court case adjourned to Jan. 20 for trial.<\/p>\n
Joshua has family roots in Nigeria and he briefly attended boarding school there as a child. He also holds Nigerian nationality.<\/p>\n
On Jan. 4, former heavyweight world champion Tyson Fury announced that he is coming out of retirement amid speculation of a long-awaited fight with Joshua, who has yet to comment about his future in boxing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Former heavyweight champion Anthony Joshua is sharing his first public message since a car crash in Nigeria claimed…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":10046,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[45],"tags":[894,498,7054,1710,922,7055,122,921,7056,7057],"class_list":{"0":"post-10045","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nigeria","8":"tag-adeniyi-mobolaji-kayode","9":"tag-anthony-joshua","10":"tag-british-media","11":"tag-instagram","12":"tag-latif-latz-ayodele","13":"tag-lynne-sladky","14":"tag-nigeria","15":"tag-sina-ghami","16":"tag-the-associated-press","17":"tag-tyson-fury"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10045","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10045"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10045\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10046"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10045"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10045"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10045"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}