Heavyweight fringe contender Joe ‘Juggernaut’ Joyce (16-2, 15 KOs)snapped his two-fight losing streak with a tenth- and final-round knockout over veteran Kash Ali (21-3, 12 KOs) on Saturday night in their co-feature bout at the Resorts World Arena in Birmingham, England.
In the tenth round, the 2016 British Olympic super heavyweight silver medalist Joyce landed a crushing right hand to the head of the 31-year-old Kash, putting him on the canvas face first. Kash returned to his feet, but the referee waived it off after taking a close look at him. The stoppage occurred at 2:53 of round ten.
Kash looked tired and hurt from the seventh round after taking some big shots to the head and body from Joyce. rounds eight and nine were totally done-sided, with Kash looking in distress, taking hard punches, and doing a lot of holding to survive.
If Joyce had thrown punches together in rounds seven through nine, he would have easily stopped Kash because he was in bad shape, tired, and hurt from the heavy shots he’d been bludgeoned with during the contest.
Joyce was carrying around an extra 30 lbs of fat on his frame. His best weight is 256 lbs, and he came into the fight at a career-high of 286 lbs, which makes some fans question his motivation. Joyce should have trained harder for this fight, given that he’d been knocked out in his last two contests by Zhilei Zhang.
Joyce’s performance may have hurt his chances of being chosen by His Excellency to fight at one of his Saudi events. Before tonight, Joyce had talked about wanting to fight Joseph Parker in a rematch on one of the Saudi cards, but that’s probably not going to happen now.
In other action on tonight’s card, super middleweight contender Zack Parker (24-1, 17 KOs) defeated former WBA 168-lb champion Tyron Zeuge (27-2-1, 15 KOs) by an unimpressive ten-round unanimous decision. Parker was dropped hard in the second round by a big right from Zeuge.
However, Parker was able to come back and outwork a tired-looking Zeuge, taking advantage of his fatigue and low work rate to win a decision. Parker suffered an ankle injury in the ninth, and was forced to clinch his way through the tenth round to survive. The scores were 96-94, 97-92, and 98-91.
It was not an impressive performance from Parker, who looked average and nowhere near the top ten-level contenders at 168. Parker was lucky he was facing this level of opponent because he would have had major issues if he were fighting the likes of David Morrell Jr., Diego Pacheco, David Benavidez, Jaime Munguia, or Caleb Plant.
