Joe Joyce vs. Rodolf Jozic – Results

By Boxing News - 02/17/2018 - Comments

Image: Joe Joyce vs. Rodolf Jozic - Results

By Tim Royner: Joe Joyce (2-0, 2 KOs) picked up his second victory of his still young career last Friday night in stopping Rudolf Jozic (4-2, 3 KOs) in round 1 at York Hall, in Bethnal Green, in London, England. The 2016 Olympic super heavyweight Joyce knocked the 25-year-old Croatian Jozic down with looping right hand to the back of the head in the final seconds of the 1st round.

The badly Jozic barely made it back to his feet, but referee Lee Cook stopped the fight due to the condition he was in. After the fight ended, Joyce did a back flip. You don’t see too many fighters Joyce’s size doing a back flip. He’s very athletic for a guy his size.

The 6’6” Joyce pressured the equally big 6’5 ½” Jozic from the opening bell, hitting him with jabs to midsection, left hooks and right hands. Joyce’s accuracy from the outside wasn’t that good. He was missing with a lot of his shots when he was at the distance. The biggest reason for the 32-year-old Joyce’s accuracy problems was his lack of hand speed. His punches were too slow for him to connect when he was on the outside. This enabled Jozic to move to his left out of the way of the slow shots.

Joyce made up for his lack of hand speed by crowding Jozic and hitting him with lefts and rights at point blank range. Even at close range, Joyce was missing frequently with his left hook. He would swing it wildly and miss badly. Joyce’s accuracy with his left hook improved when he went to the body of Jozic. When he targeted Jozic’s midsection, he was able to land with deadly accuracy. Joyce did a good job of keeping Jozic pinned to the ropes the entire 3-minute fight.

The pressure that Joyce was putting on Jozic left him no choice but to stay on the ropes because he was getting hit nonstop with punches. Joyce was like a bigger version of Gennady Golovkin with the way he was pressing Jozic and throwing nonstop shots. Joyce looked like he didn’t care too much about worrying about the placement of his punches. He was more focused on throwing a storm of shots and making Jozic defend against them. Jozic did a decent job of moving his head to get out of the way of many of Joyce’s punches, but he couldn’t avoid the chopping right hands the body shots thrown by Joyce. Those punches were landing with great frequency.

Overall, it was a better performance from Joyce than what he showed in his previous match against Ian Lewison. Joyce used his right hand a lot more last night against Jozic than he did against Lewison. In that fight, Joyce threw almost exclusively left hands. It looked at times like Joyce had an injured right arm or shoulder, because he was not throwing right hands in the fight. He beat Lewison with his jab and left hooks the entire fight. The right hand was used occasionally when in close range. Against Jozic, Joyce’s right hand was his major weapon for power shots, and he was able to hurt him with that shot more so than with his left hand. The body punching from Joyce was excellent. If Joyce can use his body punching against the better fighters, he could go far in the heavyweight division. Joyce’s lack of hand speed means he’s going to need to stay close to his opposition for him to be successful. He’s too slow to fight the faster guys on the outside. Joyce would need to crowd heavyweights like Deontay Wilder and Anthony Joshua for him to have a chance of beating them, since he lacks the hand speed to fight those guys on the outside.

Joyce’s promoter David Haye is hoping he can get the 34-year-old Dereck Chisora to agree to face Joyce next. That would be very good test for Joyce to show whether he has the talent to go far in the heavyweight division. Haye says he’ll be offering Chisora (27-8, 19 KOs) the same money as he got for his last fight against Agit Kabayel last November. Chisora lost to the 25-year-old Kabayel by a 12 round majority decision.

“We are willing to offer Dereck a sizeable six-figure pay day to take the fight,” Haye said. “It would be worth as much as Chisora’s European Heavyweight title shot against reigning undefeated 14-0 Champion, Agit Kabayel,”said Haye.

Haye and Ringstar might need to offer Chisora more money than what he received in the Kayayel fight to get him to agree to face Joyce, seeing that he lost that fight. Chisora cannot afford to lost to Joyce if he wants to keep his career moving in the direction of a title shot against IBF/WBA heavyweight champion Anthony Joshua. Chisora feels he’s not old and over-the-hill, but his 3 defeats in his last 5 fights suggests there’s something amiss with his game. Chisora fought well enough to deserve a victory against Dillian Whyte, but he didn’t perform well in his recent defeats to Kabayel and Kubrat Pulev. Chisora was outclassed in both of those fights, and he fought like he was lazy in not in the best condition. Chisora fought slowly against both fighters, and didn’t press the attack like we’d seen him do during his better efforts against Malik Scott and Robert Helenius. Chisora’s hesitation at signing for a fight with Joyce could be concern on his part whether he can do the job against the much taller fighter. Chisora, 6’1 1/2”, has had problems his entire career when facing taller fighters. Joyce is a different type of fighter than the taller guys that used their height and reach to get the better of Chisora on the outside. Joyce fights a lot at close range, so he would be someone that Chisora would have a better chance of landing his shots against. Chisora wouldn’t have to go looking for Joyce, being that he would be right there in front of him at close range. The thing that would potentially pose a problem for Chisora is the high work rate of Joyce. He throws a lot of punches, and he’s capable of doing that for an entire fight. Chisora would be forced to match Joyce’s work rate for him to avoid getting beaten up and stopped.

Joyce would need to crowd Chisora for him to beat him. Even Chisora has better hand speed than Joyce. The lack of hand speed by Joyce would force him to stay at close range against Chisora for the entire fight to try and beat him with short range punches. Joyce would still get hit a lot, but he might be able to outwork and ultimately stop the older fighter. Chisora isn’t much older than the 32-year-old Joyce. Chisora has a lot of ring wear on him from his fights against Helenius, Vitali Klitschko, Pulev, Tyson Fury (x 2), David Haye and Kabayel. Chisora took a lot of shots in those 7 fights. Just starting out as a pro, Joyce doesn’t have nearly the same kind of mileage on him as Chisora. With Chisora, it’s important that he put together a string of 6 to 8 consecutive wins to get him in position for a fight against Joshua. It’s not out of the question that Chisora could get a fight against Joshua, but it’s going to require that he put together a string of good wins for him to get moved up the rankings. Chisora is presently rated #14 with the World Boxing Council. Chisora is barely rated in the top 15. If he loses to Joyce, he’ll be out of the top tier, and it’ll be nearly impossible for him to come back from that loss.