By Scott Gilfoid: Joe Joyce (1-0, 1 KOs) did an admirable job of defeating British domestic level heavyweight Ian Lewison (12-4-1, 8 KOs) by an 8th round knockout in his debut last Saturday night at the Indigo at The O2 in London, UK.
Joyce, a 2016 Olympic super heavyweight from Great Britain, wore down the 36-year-old Lewison with heavy shots, mostly left hands, until his corner was forced to stop the contest in the 8th round. Joyce’s win over Lewison has made huge waves in the boxing world, as a lot of fans were excited about his performance. Lewison didn’t look so great, but Joyce was impressive with the way he performed.
Joyce, 32, says he could be back inside the ring in less than 2 months on December 17 for his second fight as a pro. Joyce’s promoter David Haye is interested in matching him against British heavyweight champion Sam Sexton (24-3, 9 KOs) for his second fight. Sexton, 33, recently defeated Gary Cornish by a 12 round unanimous decision to claim the vacant British heavyweight title earlier this month on October 6. Sexton would be an excellent fight for Joyce, as would guys like David Price, Cornish, Derek Chisora or Dillian Whyte. The chances of Joyce getting Whyte and Chisora into the ring are quite low unfortunately. Those guys are not going to be too eager to fight the towering 6’6” Joyce, especially after the way that he dealt with Lewison.
“I thought I did a great job of landing my job on his head,” said Joyce to Behind the Gloves. “I’m very pleased with my debut. It didn’t really feel like a debut, because of my World Series of Boxing experience. I thought I’d use my jab a lot, move around the ring and watch out for his swings, because I knew he was dangerous. I was trying to be a little more elusive. There’s a possible bout on December 17th, so we’ll see if that fight gets made or not. I’m ready for anything,” said Joyce.
Getting back into the ring so soon will likely mean that Joyce will be fighting a lower level guy. Haye will need to come up with some money to get a decent fighter to agree to fight Joyce at this early date on December 17. The opponent for Joyce would have to be signed almost immediately for them to be able to have an adequate amount of time to train for the fight.
“I was very happy how he boxed tonight,” said David Haye about Joyce. “He showed me the stuff that he showed me behind closed doors. Believe me, tonight was 30 to 40 percent of what he has. This guy is no ordinary fighter. I believe he’s one of the best already. He’s just got to prove it already. He’s just got to prove it time and time again. We want to keep him active and keep him busy, and start raising the game, fighting British level fighters. I’m very interested in getting him in the ring fighting British champion Sexton or the Commonwealth champion in his next fight,” said Haye.
Getting an opponent to agree to fight Joyce could prove difficult. With Joyce’s size, power, boxing ability and overall pedigree, the good domestic level British heavyweights are going to shy away from fighting him.
Here are the guys that Joyce needs to target for his December 17th fight:
• David Price
• Sam Sexton
• Dereck Chisora
• Dillian Whyte
• Gary Cornish
• Dave Allen
There are obviously a lot of other domestic level fighters that Joyce can pool from for his December 17th fight, but the above mentioned heavyweights would be the best.
Since the 32-year-old Joyce is being fast tracked with his career due to his age, it might be a good idea for Haye to target some of the fringe heavyweight contenders in the division.
Here are some possible targets that would be perfect for Joyce:
• Kyotaro Fujimoto
• Adam Kownacki
• Guillermo Jones
• Tom Schwarz
• Otto Wallin
• Agit Kabayel
• Amir Mansour
• Charles Martin
• Eric Molina
• Johann Duhaupas
• Zhilei Zhang
These are guys that Joyce will be expected to beat if he wants to win a heavyweight world title in the next year or two. He’s got to be able to beat these types of heavyweights for him to take his career to the next level. As such, Joyce should start facing them immediately so he can get a quick ranking in the top 15.
The only thing that I didn’t like about Joyce’s performance was his lack of a right hand in the fight. Joyce was totally reliant on his left hand to do all the work against Lewison. It looked to me like Joyce couldn’t use his right. I was wondering whether he Joyce was injured, because in the past, he’d been able to use his right hand for power punching. But last night, Joyce rarely threw right hands, and when he did, they short punches that looked less than powerful.
Joyce has always used his left hand for most of the work he does inside the ring. Up until the Lewison fight, Joyce had used his right hand to do damage to his opponents. Unfortunately, Joyce’s ability to use his right seemed to be impaired against Lewison. If this is going to be an ongoing thing for Joyce, it’s going to make it difficult for him to succeed against the better heavyweights like Deontay Wilder, Jarrell Miller, Alexander Povetkin, Luis Ortiz, Anthony Joshua and Dillian Whyte.
Joyce has got to be able to use his right hand for power punching like he does with his left. If Joyce’s left hand was incredibly powerful, then it wouldn’t be as much of a problem that he’s not using his right. Joyce doesn’t possess the huge power in his left hand needed for him to get away with not using his right. Haye and trainer Ismael Salas are going to need to work on Joyce to try and develop his right hand a little more, if it’s not injured. It looked to me like Joyce literally couldn’t use his right hand. Even when Joyce did use his right, he was only able to throw short punches with that hand. It’s unclear what the overall problem is.