David Haye Not happy with Joe Joyce’s performance against Michael Wallisch

By Boxing News - 07/26/2020 - Comments

By Kenneth Friedman: David Haye wasn’t happy with the performance by his fighter heavyweight Joe Joyce after watching him dismantle Michael Wallisch in three rounds last Saturday night at the BT Sport Studio, Stratford.

The unbeaten 2016 Olympic silver medalist Joyce (11-0, 10 KOs) looked painfully slow, sluggish, and was easy to hit throughout the contest against the 34-year-old Wallisch. While Joyce did stop the German heavyweight Wallisch in the third, he was getting caught shots he shouldn’t have been by this fighter.

Wallisch, 34, is a second-tier heavyweight, and not a top 15 level talent. Unfortunately, Joyce failed to separate himself from Wallisch to show that he’s levels above him. Yes, Joyce won the fight, but only because of his high work rate and power.

Joyce has put too much weight on

Haye didn’t like the weight that Joyce was carrying around for the fight, as he came into it at a career-high 270 pounds. Three years ago, Joyce started his career at 255 pounds, and even at that weight, he looked slower than the 230 pounds that he had weighed during the 2016 Olympics a year earlier.

The extra weight that Joyce has packed on since his amateur days hasn’t improved his power. It’s mostly just slowed him down, making him vulnerable to getting hit. Haye should have said something years ago about Joyce’s weight, as he’s been getting steadily bigger in the last two years.

For example, Joyce went from 251 lbs against Ivica Bacurin in June 2018 to 263 lbs three months later against Iago Kiladze in September 2018. That’s 12 pounds that Joyce needlessly added to his frame in just three months.

Joe Joyce was hit too much by Wallisch

“I was worried about the flip at the end. He got the work done. And he beat the guy up like he was a bongo, but I was unhappy with the amount of clean punches he was taking,” said Haye to BT Sport Boxing on Joe Joyce’s win over Michael Wallisch.

Image: David Haye Not happy with Joe Joyce's performance against Michael Wallisch

“He took five or six big concussive hooks that he could have avoided. I know he’s got very good reflexes. He didn’t really show it tonight. I wouldn’t want him to go into the fight with Dubois with the same mindset that he had here tonight.

“He had no consideration for the punches that were coming. He leaned backward a couple of times from the right hands, crude right hands thrown from Wallisch, but against Dubois, he’s really going to need to get those feets going.

“I would hope so,” said Haye when told that Dubois would be more prepared for Dubois. “I thought he was going to attack this fight like he would have treated the Dubois fight.

“You normally use these fights before the big ones as a dress rehearsal. He came in here heavier than I’d like him to have been, and he just marched him down.

“That’s good and well against this level of opponent, but at the world level when someone can take you out with one shot, you’ve got to get your head moving, you’ve got to show some feints, you’ve got to set something up,” Haye said on Joyce needing to improve for the Dubois match.

There’s no question that Joyce 35, was getting hit way too often by Wallisch last Saturday night, but it’s easy to see why.

The Juggernaut needs to be smarter against Dubois

“Against Wallisch, he could just go out there and boom, boom, boom,” Haye added on Joyce’s performance against the German fighter. “He knew no one outside of the world level can take that.

Image: David Haye Not happy with Joe Joyce's performance against Michael Wallisch

“This is good enough to beat everybody up to the top ten, but he’s fighting Dubois, and he isn’t one of those guys that you can walk down. He needs to be a bit smarter. I know Joyce can box. I’ve seen him box consistently in the gym when he fought so many different fighters.

“He used his legs. He’s got great movement. He’s  great athlete. As I said, he can do flips. Let’s see some of that stuff. So hopefully when he goes back to the gym, he can review the fight and realize that the shots he got hit with are shots he should not be getting hit with. Then he can get some confidence into this big Dubois clash.

“No, he doesn’t look like the same fighter,” said Haye on Joe ‘Juggernaut’ Joyce. “I don’t think he looked the same. I think he looked like the same fighter because he wasn’t moving like he normally does.

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“He wasn’t avoiding the punches, and he wasn’t slipping. I didn’t see [that]. When I say slipping the shot, I mean coming into the shot and moving. He didn’t do that, and that’s something he’d been working on for a long time,” Haye continued.

Unless Joyce does make rapid changes to his game, he’ll certainly lose to the younger 22-year-old Dubois. Unfortunately, at this point, it’s too late for Joyce to trim down enough for him to pick up some badly needed speed for the Dubois clash.

Joyce needs to use his legs

“He’s with [coach] Ismael Salas, and Salas about rhythm, about timing, about flow, and about movement,” David said about ‘The Juggernaut’ Joyce’s coach Salas.

“Maybe, I know Salas is coming back into camp for this fight [between Joyce and Dubois], and he’s not been able to be involved because COVID has kept him in Las Vegas.

Image: David Haye Not happy with Joe Joyce's performance against Michael Wallisch

“He [Joyce] needs to get those legs going. He’s got great movement with his legs., and he’s going to need to use those legs against Dubois to stay out of that danger zone early.

“If he can get into the second half of the fight, then he can start pressing or he may just walk him down like that. You never know. But it would be a very, very risky strategy against a young man.

“You have to take care of domestic business when it’s available. It shows the type of fighter Joyce and Dubois are for wanting to take that risky fight against the other big potential world champions at such an early stage in both of their careers,” ‘The Hayemaker’ said.

Joyce was too big and too slow to avoid the shots. From the very beginning of his career, Joyce has never been fast, but he’s slowed visibly in the last two years.

That’s not because Joyce is losing his reflexes rapidly. He’s putting on too much weight.

There are only three months to go before Joyce faces Dubois on October 24 at the O2 Arena in London, England.

Joyce can’t meltdown from 270 to 230 pounds in just three months without it dramatically weakening him.

Most of the weight that Joyce has packed on since he turned pro in 2017 is muscle weight, and he can’t burn that off rapidly without it hurting his performance.

Dubois taking a risky fight against Erik Pfeifer

“It’s something that rarely happens, and we’re so fortunate that it does,” David said. “Let’s just hope Dubois gets through [his next fight]. He’s [ Erik Pfeifer] a handful, and he’s got speed and power.

Image: David Haye Not happy with Joe Joyce's performance against Michael Wallisch

“He’s only had seven fights, but a wealth of amateur pedigree in the World Series of Boxing. These fights are against elite Olympic level fighters. So he’s no Wallisch, let’s put it that way.

“This guy is significantly better than Wallisch, and that shows me that Dubois is very confident in his abilities. He’s not looking at a tune-up. He wants a real fight to bring the best out of himself, and that, believe it or not, is very important.

“When you’re going into a fight against someone so dangerous as Joyce to put yourself in another tough fight prior to that shows me his supreme confidence,” said Haye on Dubois.

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Haye should have stepped in a lot sooner to tell the 6’6″ Joyce to back off from bulking up because he’s turned himself into a modern-day Primo Carnera. Indeed, Carnera was arguably faster than what Joyce showed against Wallish.