Big Joe Joyce is one win away from being the most avoided heavyweight fighter in the last decade.
On Saturday, at the Copper Box in the Olympic Park, Joyce fights Zhilei Zhang in the latest of an impressive sequence of hard fights.
A good win against the Chinese idol will guarantee that Joyce is ignored. He is the mandatory challenger for Oleksandr Usyk’s WBO title, but Joyce is third in a long and increasingly ridiculous line of mandatory defences that Usyk must satisfy. Joyce, under the present system, would finally get his chance in September 2024. It might be later if Tyson Fury ends his exile and agrees to a fight. Boxing has always been sport’s greatest waiting game.
Joyce is unbeaten in 15 fights and has stopped or knocked out fourteen of his victims so far. It is not uncommon for heavyweights to compile records like that, but Joyce has been matched extremely hard from the very start and his latest sequence of fights is one of the very best in the heavyweight division. He has not avoided a soul and he might just find that he is the man nobody wants to fight.
“Why does my name not get mentioned?” Joyce asked. “I watch all the heavyweight fights, and nobody is calling for me; not [Anthony] Joshua, not Usyk and not Fury. Why?”
As an amateur, Joyce fought Joshua and Usyk; losing to both. Joyce then emerged as the world’s No 1 but lost a controversial decision in the Olympic final in 2016 to France’s Tony Yoka. That final has now been revealed to be one of the many fights at the Rio Olympics that was placed on a list of dubious results; the corruption in Rio is why boxing is currently not on the schedule for 2028 in Los Angeles. Yoka, incidentally, is a pro now and recently lost a decision to Carlos Takam; Joyce ruined Takam in six rounds. The form line is one thing, justice is a bit more elusive.
Joyce has been on the outside for a long time; in late 2020 he was matched with unbeaten Daniel Dubois behind closed doors; Dubois quit with a damaged eye socket in Round 10. The fight should have been in front of 20,000, but Covid restrictions denied Joyce a bit of extra glory. Today, Dubois is waiting for confirmation of a summer fight with Usyk. That is the way the business works. After Dubois, the next in line for Usyk is a man called Filip Hrgovic. Last August, Hrgovic survived several rocky moments to outpoint Zhang in Saudi Arabia; Joyce beat Hrgovic as an amateur. This business has never been fair and seldom makes sense.
Zhang is a big man, standing every inch of 6’6, weighing just shy of 20 stone, and he is also a southpaw. It is hard to look good against him, and his only defeat in 26 fights was to Hrgovic. “He’s not that big,” Joyce joked. Joyce, incidentally, is the same dimensions, almost exactly.
Joyce also holds the WBO’s interim title, which is one of those annoying but oddly necessary accessories in the boxing world; if Usyk, who holds the full WBO belt, was stripped or had a forced break through injury, Joyce would in theory become the full champion. It’s messy, but it does maintain a semblance of order in the anarchy of the division.
Meanwhile, Joyce will step in the ring on Saturday without a care in the world. He is a philosophical boxer, knowing that stress and complaints will not bring him any closer to the full world heavyweight title. He knows that only his fists and his performances can do that. It is not a shock to know that Joyce maintains a studio for his painting in Putney during the months he is away at camp in Las Vegas. “It’s my retreat,” said Joyce. A heavyweight with a passion for fine art and a secret studio is possibly just what the division needs right now.
Joyce will win and send a clear message to the scared division that he is the one fighting man prepared to meet anybody. On Sunday afternoon, Big Joe Joyce will have the easel out.
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