Heavyweight contender Joe ‘Juggernaut’ Joyce 15-1 (14) has vowed to be back following his sixth-round stoppage loss to Zhilei Zhang 25-1-1 (20) on Saturday night, but not everyone is convinced he should box on.
The 37-year-old Brit was nailed early and often by Chinese southpaw Zhang’s straight left hand, closing his right eye and forcing the stoppage before the midway point of the fight at the Copper Box Arena in London, England on Saturday night.
“Before you all write me off I’m OK just got a bruised eye,” Joyce posted to social media. “I think I’ll be OK, as fights go I’m in good health. Not a great performance however, but I’ll go back to the drawing board and have to improve.
“Zhang was the better fighter on the night, but I still think I can beat him, even though he’s a strong contender.”
Zhang, 39, was coming off a disputed points loss to fellow contender Filip Hrgovic 15-0 (12) last August. The 30-year-old Croatian wasted little time in calling out Joyce’s promoter Frank Warren for the comments he made in the wake of his win over Zhang.
“I just want to say Frank Warren was telling a lot of shit after my fight with Zhang,” Hrgovic said to iFL TV. “He talked a lot of shit. What can he tell me now? I destroyed Daniel Dubois in sparring and now his fighter got beat by the fighter I beat. What he want to say right now?
“I want to ask him one question: why he producing only hype jobs? If you can forward him this question, Frank, you ask why I was considered a bogeyman, so now you see why I was considered bogeyman because I beat on my worst night Zhang and he came to London and destroyed your fighter in six rounds. That’s why I’m considered a bogeyman.”
The pile-on continued from former two-time unified heavyweight champion Anthony Joshua’s promoter Eddie Hearn, who called on Joyce to hang up the gloves before he gets seriously hurt.
“The reality is, Joe Joyce has never boxed an elite heavyweight,” the Matchroom Boxing boss said.
“Zhilei Zhang is not an elite heavyweight. Joe wasn’t good enough to deal with Zhilei Zhang. When you sell attributes based on ‘you can hit me as hard as you like and I’ll keep coming’, that’s not the recipe for longevity in a career.”
The lack of effective defence from Joyce bothers Hearn.
“He gets hit by absolutely everything, Joe Joyce. I would understand if he retired from boxing. He’s taken unbelievable punishment in sparring, in amateur tournaments and even in the professional code and it was really uncomfortable watching that on Saturday.
“If you can’t beat Zhilei Zhang, you have absolutely no chance of winning a world heavyweight title – no chance. If Oleksandr Usyk had boxed Joyce on Saturday night, it would’ve been one of the greatest mismatches of all time.
“If Zhilei Zhang is doing that to him, Usyk would have absolutely peppered him.
“The reality is Joe Joyce is not an elite heavyweight and you can talk about ‘oh, he’s steamroll Anthony Joshua’, do you know the speed of AJ compared to Zhang? AJ would ping him absolutely everywhere.
“Joe has got a massive decision now, because if he doesn’t rematch Zhang, he should retire.”
