Jake Paul breaks his silence on ex-rival Anthony Joshua’s shock car crash in Nigeria… just days after their fight

Jake Paul insists he ‘prayed’ for former rival Anthony Joshua after the heavyweight boxer’s horrific car crash.

On Monday morning, the 36-year-old England star was injured in a crash in Nigeria that killed two other passengers, before being ‘rescued alive’ and taken to a local hospital.

Paul and Joshua had shared the ring just 10 days earlier in a blockbuster Netflix match in which the boxer-turned-celebrity was defeated by a sixth-round knockout.

There appeared to be no bad blood between the two parties after the fight, and Paul showed that again when talking about Joshua’s car accident a few hours after the incident.

As for X, he wrote: ‘Life is much more important than boxing. Praying for the lives lost, AJ and everyone affected by today’s unfortunate accident.’

Former heavyweight champion Joshua was in the Lexus SUV when it crashed into a stationary truck on the Lagos-Ibadan expressway shortly after 11am on Monday.

Paul and Joshua shared the boxing ring on December 19, just 10 days before Joshua’s accident

Footage posted online shows Joshua, the 36-year-old former heavyweight world champion, shirtless and dazed, sitting in a Lexus amid broken glass.

While images of the crumpled wreckage of the SUV were released by Nigerian authorities, a Mitsubishi believed to be part of Joshua’s convoy lay undamaged just meters away.

The front of the vehicle was completely destroyed, the doors of the car were removed and the roof was removed.

Footage previously posted online showed the former heavyweight world champion shirtless and looking dazed as he sat amid broken glass in the wrecked vehicle.

But while two of the five people involved in the collision died, Joshua miraculously cheated death and was later seen talking to authorities in the front seat of an emergency vehicle.

A total of five people were involved in the collision, Nigerian road safety officials said this afternoon.

It is understood that Joshua was sitting behind the driver along with another passenger at the time of the accident. The security team was following behind the Lexus.

Authorities stated that the SUV was traveling “above the legal speed limit” and lost control while making an “overtaking manoeuvre”, then crashed into a truck parked on the side of the road.

The Daily Mail understands the car’s tire burst when it left the road and hit the truck.

Paul and Joshua shared the stage just a week before car crash in Miami

Joshua broke Paul’s jaw in two places in bizarre boxing match

Joshua’s promoter Eddie Hearn told Daily Mail Sport: ‘We are trying to contact Anthony and in the meantime we don’t want to speculate about how he is but thankfully he looks fine from what I’ve seen in the photos.

‘We are awaiting further information about what happened and will update in due course.’

Hearn was promoting Joshua for his fight with Paul earlier this month and post-match fans claimed it had been ‘fixed’ or ‘fixed’.

Absolutely never. “If you look at the couple of right hands that AJ missed in the first few rounds, if they had landed they would have done the same job to Jake’s jaw,” Hearn said.

‘And Jake did a very good job of avoiding them, so I always said that going into fights: AJ is not the type of guy to show up like a train; just start swinging. ‘He’s going to take his time and that’s what he did.’

Joshua finished the job with a knockout blow that broke Paul’s jaw in two places and caused the loss of multiple teeth.

Hearn admitted that Joshua expected the fight to end sooner than it did.

‘The fight definitely went a few more rounds than expected from Anthony. But even now it’s like ‘yeah it’s definitely fixed’. Today a guy commented on one of my posts, it was definitely corrected. Do you know that his jaw was broken in two places?’ said Hearn.