Joe Joyce has been backed by promoter Frank Warren to "walk through" Anthony Joshua if the pair were to meet in the professional ranks this year.
The hard-hitting heavyweight faces Zhilei Zhang on Saturday night at the Copper Box Arena, and is on the cusp of a world title fight with either Oleksandr Usyk or Tyson Fury. However, there is also unfinished business between he and former amateur opponent Joshua.
Both men are former Olympians, with Joshua picking up gold in 2012 while Joyce took silver four years later. They fought each other as youngsters; Joshua winning by knockout in one of Joyce's first bouts before both went on to major success in the paid ranks years later.
And Warren is confident of a victory for Joyce if the pair were to rematch their old amateur bout, telling the Queensberry Promotions YouTube channel : “I think Joe Joyce would knock him out, as soon as he catches him. He will walk through him. I mean, they want to pick up the phone and talk to us about that, we’ll do that immediately, if Joe comes through.
"Remember, Joe’s the [WBO] interim champion, so he’s the gatekeeper to the WBO mandatory. He is the gatekeeper for that fight. So, if anybody wants it, they know what they’ve got to do. They’ve got to fight him. And if Joshua wants to get himself into that position, we’ll gladly accommodate him for that. I can speak on behalf of Joe because Joe has told me he wants the fight.”
“The interesting thing about it is, they can look at all these old videos and dig up all this old crap from the past, and they need to keep looking there because that will hopefully give them some confidence. But when it gets down to the nitty gritty, when we get down to professional boxing, when we get down to that, when we look at improvement - AJ, no, there hasn’t been any improvement in him. But there’s definitely been an improvement in Joe Joyce.”
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There is bad blood between Joyce and Joshua dating back to that amateur bout, which was one of his first on a big stage while his rival had competed 24 times and was just over a year from winning Olympic gold. The soft-spoken Putney native claims that the future heavyweight champion over-celebrated after his victory, and that it still plays on his mind.
"I’ve always been playing catch-up," Joyce told Boxing King Media. "Because if I had beaten Joshua in the London finals then it could’ve been me perhaps in 2012. So I’ve always been trying to catch up, and now I’m ahead of them in the rankings, I’ve got the interim title," Joyce said.
“Certain things we’ve kind of fallen out about. There was some footage leaked of the sparring of all his best bits, maybe it was from one of his team, and I saw him laughing and gloating about beating me in the amateurs when the ref was quick to jump in. I had to fight twice that night against a southpaw, so I kept on walking into his right hand cause I was like a novice at the time. To see him laughing and gloating about that, and the different comments… Anyway – it’s a big fight in the making.”
