By Scott Gilfoid: 2016 Olympic silver medalist Joe Joyce is in discussions with David Haye’s promotional company to potentially sign a pro contract with them. A deal is said to be close to being done with Haye being on the verge of signing the talented Joyce with his company. This would be a great addition to Haye’s promotional company. Joyce is one of those rare heavyweights that can hit the ground running and do well straightaway rather than needing many years to develop.
Right off the bat, Joyce could be considered the best inside fighter in the heavyweight division. Joyce’s inside fighting ability would make him a nightmare to guys like Anthony Joshua and Joseph Parker. Joshua can fight a little bit on the inside, but not really. He’s a one-trick pony with the uppercuts that he throws. Joyce is able to throw to the body over and over again on the inside, which makes it really hard to throw an uppercut. Joyce is said to have knocked Joshua down recently in sparring. Yeah, it’s just sparring, but it tells you what kind of a force Joyce is.
The 6’6”, 238 pound Joyce, who comes from Great Britain, lost a very controversial decision to France’s Tony Yoka at super heavyweight in the finals of the 2016 Olympics. A lot of boxing fans felt that Joyce had done more than enough to rate the win. I saw the fight as well, and I clearly had Joyce beating Yoka. Joyce appeared to hurt Yoka on a number of occasions, and had him looking gassed out at the end of the fight. Had this been a 12 rounder, I think Joyce would have knocked Yoka out well before the 6th.
At 31, Joyce has got to work quickly with his career because he doesn’t have the luxury of time. Joyce will be turning 32 in September. Of course, that’s not old for a heavyweight, but it’s quite old for someone just starting their career. Normally fighters are brought along slowly over a 6-10-year period before they’re put in with the top level opposition. Obviously, that’s not going to work with the soon to be 32-year-old Joyce. You can’t stall for 10 years with his career before stepping him up, because he’ll be in his 40s by the time he fights for a world title.
The only question I would have about Joyce signing with Haye is whether he’ll be able to get enough fights to move his career along in a speedy manner. Haye doesn’t fight a lot of himself. You’d hate to see Joyce just languish after he signs with Haye, fighting rarely. As long as Haye can get Joyce a lot of fights, and put him in with the top talents as soon as possible, then I see it as a good move. If Joyce were to sign with Eddie Hearn, I would be worried about him being potentially forgotten about.
Hearn seems to be mostly focused on Joshua right now. You can argue that’s Hearn’s bread and butter fighter, the guy that brings in a lot of money to his stable. If Joyce were to join up with Hearn, would he be a forgotten man or would he put as much attention on his career as we’re seeing him do with Joshua? The British boxing fans would like to see Joyce moved along quickly. But we’ve seen how guys like Chris Eubank Jr. and Luis “King Kong” Ortiz didn’t do well with Hearn when they were with him.
Joyce recently helped Anthony Joshua get ready for his April 29 fight against Wladimir Klitschko by working as a sparring partner in camp. I’m not sure that was the smartest move that Joshua could have made, because Joyce fights nothing like Wladimir. There’s no comparison at all between the two fighters. Joyce is slow on his feet, and he’s a heavy-handed guy who is at his best on the inside throwing body shots. Wladiimir never throws body shots ever. Wladimir moves around a lot, throwing jabs and occasionally right hands from the outside.
Wladimir likes to tie up his opponents a lot; though he didn’t do much of that against Joshua. Joyce doesn’t do a lot of holding. He believes in working on the inside. I think it was probably not a smart move for Joshua to use Joyce as sparring partner. I don’t think there’s anyone in the heavyweight division that fights like Joyce. He’s like a heavyweight version of boxing great Julio Cesar Chavez. The difference is Joyce throws his body shots without hooking the way Chavez used to do. Joyce throws his body shots straight up the middle. It’s got to be tough on Joyce’s opponents to take those shots.
Joyce’s game seems more suited to the pros than Joshua. I think Joyce is the better talent for the pro ranks. Joyce doesn’t have much in the way of hand speed, but he makes up for that with his heavy shots to the body on the inside. You don’t need a lot of hand speed to throw powerful body shots.
Joyce doesn’t have a gold medal from the Olympics like Joshua. I think that hurts Joyce. The thing is, Joyce fought better in 2016 Olympics in winning his fights than Joshua did in winning his controversial gold medal in the 2012 Olympics in my opinion. A lot of boxing fans had Joshua losing 2 of the fights in the 2012 Olympics to Roberto Cammarelle of Italy and Erislandy Savon of Cuba. Boxing News 24 had Joshua losing all 4 of his fights in the 2012 Olympics.
In contrast, Joyce was dominant in the 2016 Olympics, and he clearly got the better of Tony Yoka in the finals. The scoring of the Yoka vs. Joyce fight was bizarre. I saw so many huge body shots that Joyce landed that weren’t scored as points. That just proves that in the amateurs, head shots are what matters. Even if that’s all you look at for the Yoka-Joyce fight, Joyce was the guy landing the bigger shots. His punches were sapping Yoka’s head back over and over again. Joyce wants a rematch with Yoka.
I don’t think that’s going to happen anytime soon unfortunately. Yoka made his pro debut last Saturday night in stopping Travis Clark in the 2nd round. It was not an impressive performance from Yoka, who was hit with left hooks occasionally from the rounded Clark. That fight showed that Yoka hasn’t improved his defense much at all since turning pro. Yoka was knocked out by Erislandy Savon by a left hook to the head at the 2011 World Amateur Boxing Championships.
This wasn’t just a simple knockout. Yoka was KNOCKED OUT. He was badly hurt. In watching that fight, I could predict that Yoka was going to get knocked out sooner or later, because he had no defense to the big left hooks that Savon was throwing at him. For that matter, Anthony Joshua had no defense against those left hooks from Savon either in the 2012 Olympics. Joshua was able to take the shots in winning a controversial decision over the Cuban fighter. Yoka couldn’t take them, and he was blasted out quickly.
I’m wondering if the other British promotional companies are making a play to sign Joyce. With the kind of talent Joyce has, you would think that he would have already been scooped up by one of the promoters in the UK.