By Jake Tiernan: Joe Joyce came in a career-high 281 lbs at today’s weigh-in for his rematch with WBO interim heavyweight champion Zhilei Zhang on Saturday night at the OVO Arena in London.
One could see a noticeable Elvis Presley-like paunch on Joyce, which suggests he hasn’t been missing too many meals since last April.
Zhang also weighed in at a career-high, scaling at 287 lbs, which is nine lbs heavier than his previous weight of 278 for his fight last April against ‘The Juggernaut’ Joyce.
If Joyce loses, he at least has a handy excuse to tell his fans by blaming it on him putting on too much weight for the fight because it seems a wrong-headed thing for him to have done. Joyce was already glacially slow to begin with, and putting on 25 extra pounds on his frame isn’t going to increase his speed.
The one you have to worry about is Joyce (15-1,14KOs) because he’s a whopping 25 lbs heavier than the 256 lbs he weighed last April in his sixth round TKO loss.
Granted, Joyce had weighed 271 lbs for his 11th round stoppage loss to Joseph Parker in his previous fight, but still, ballooning up to 281 doesn’t seem like a wise decision. You have to wonder if this was his idea or his training team.
Of course, it could also be that Joyce physically let himself go after his loss to Zhang last April and didn’t eat right or exercise after that disappointing loss.
If Joyce put on too much weight, it wouldn’t have been possible for him to take it all off in a regular eight to ten-week camp. He would need one of those Tyson Fury prolonged camps to trim off the massive pounds he’d packed on from eating calorie-rich foods like cake, ice cream, cookies, candy &pies.
Undercard weights:
Light heavyweight Anthony Yarde (23-3, 22 KOs) and his opponent Jorge Silva (22-8, 12 KOs)both weighed in at 178 lbs for their chief support bout on Saturday night.
The Zhang vs. Joyce II event will be streamed live onESPN+ in the States at 5:00 p.m. ET/2:00 p.m. PT.
Joyce is the older fighter
“Unless he gets really careless because he’s a big guy and unless Joyce is a lot better than he was last time and a lot more invigorated and replenished because he looked like a shot guy,” said Teddy Atlas on his social platform discussing the Zhilei Zhang vs. Joe Joyce fight for Saturday night.
“Unless Joyce can get close to that chin again, I’m going with Zhang again. He’s not going to make you forget any of the heavyweight greats, Zhang. He’s not going to make you forget Joe Lous. He’s a big guy, like Primo Carnera, who was a heavyweight champion for a minute back in the 30s or 40s.
“Zhang looks like Fred Astaire, even though he’s not light on his feet, but he looks like Fred Astaire compared to Joyce.
“Joyce has more miles on the odometer. You just can’t get hit that much. I know he has an iron chin, and I know he was catching up with everybody, like Parker and some decent fighters.
“He could, even though he was slow, even though he slowed & predictable, but he had a great chin and could punch.
“When he finally got to you, up until the Zhang fight, he’d get rid of you, but he took a lot of punishment to get there, and that punishment has a toll. He had a Joyce is the older fighter here.
“I think it’s taken a toll,” Atlas continued about Joyce. “He looked like a shot fighter in his last fight. Look, there can always be mitigating circumstances. I’m not there; I’m not in his camp. Maybe he got sick, really. Maybe something happened, and he didn’t have a good camp.
“If that’s the case, maybe he wins this time. But without having information to explain why he looked so horrendous, other than the fact that he never got taught right to elude a punch rather than eat a punch,” said Atlas about Joyce.