By Marcus Richardson: 2016 Olympic super heavyweight silver medalist Joe Joyce (3-0, 3 KOs) scored his third knockout of his short 1-year career with a 1st round knockout of 34-year-old American Donnie Palmer (9-2, 8 KOs) on Saturday night at York all in Bethnal Green, London, UK.
Joyce dropped the 6’10” Palmer with a hard right hand to the head. Palmer then got wearily back to his feet, and the fight was promptly stopped by the referee. It wasn’t much of a fight. It looked more like a demolition job to me.
In the early moments of the fight, the 6’6” Joyce jabbed the slow and out of shape looking Palmer. Joyce moved around while throwing a slow jab. When he saw there was nothing coming back from Palmer, Joyce threw a left-right combination that dropped him hard on his backside. That was it. Palmer got up and the referee waived off the fight. The left hand that Joyce threw missed, but the right that followed it landed flush on the side of Palmer’s head, sending him down on the canvas.
Joyce wanted to fight Dereck Chisora, but he showed no interest in facing him. Dillian Whyte is already scheduled to fight Lucas Browne on March 24. Whyte’s promoter Eddie Hearn would likely never have agreed to let him fight Joyce. David Price is already scheduled with a fight later this month against Alexander Povetkin on the Anthony Joshua vs. Joseph Parker card on March 31.
Joyce looks good enough to be fighting better guys than the likes of Palmer. I don’t know what’s going on with his management. They should have skipped past these novice level fighters like Palmer and put Joyce in with someone like Kubrat Pulev or Dillian Whyte right off the bat. Those are guys that Joyce likely would have beaten in his first pro fight. It’s a waste of his ability for him to put in with soft opposition repeatedly.
Joyce will be fighting next on the Tony Bellew vs. David Haye 2 undercard on May 5th at the O2 Arena in London. The opponent is expected to be American Lenroy Thomas (22-4-1, 10 KO). Thomas, 33, defeated David Allen by a 12 round split decision last year in May. Thomas has losses to Dominic Breazeale [TKO 4], Arron Lyons, Andrey Fedosov (TKO 3) and Ruben Rivera. If Joyce can knockout Thomas faster than heavyweight contenders Thomas and Fedosov, it would say a lot about his boxing talent. Those are top fighters.
Thomas is a much better fighter than what we saw tonight from Donnie Palmer. Joyce’s promoters at Ringstar can do a lot better than guys like Palmer. Joyce is supposed to be getting fast tracked to put him in position for a world title shot against heavyweight champion Anthony Joshua, but when you see match-ups like tonight’s Joyce-Palmer fight, I don’t know. It looks like Joyce is being brought along in the same way you’d bring along a fighter with no amateur experience. Joyce isn’t young enough for him to wade through 10 years of mismatches against the likes of Palmer, Ian Lewison and Rodolf Jozic (4-2). Joyce’s last two fights have been dreadful mismatches against woeful opposition.