The undefeated British super heavyweight is coming up on a year on the shelf (as of Monday) and will have passed it by fight night, meaning his current top 15 world rankings (WBC #11 and WBO #12) may be in jeopardy of lapsing. The nearly equally large German has been out for nearly as long, having last competed in September - and is himself not even close to ranked, and unlikely to count in any org's eyes for much value to keep Joyce doing more than at best treading water. Joyce was supposed to face Marco Huck in January for the vacant EBU title. When the Bosniak withdrew there was briefly a rumor that Daniel Dubois might step in, but negotiations stalled and then COVID-19 happened. The current plan is for Joyce to face Wallish and Dubois to face Erik Pfeiffer in tuneups, and barring any upsets the countrymen will square off in October. Wallisch has been kayoed in three of his last four outings. He failed to make it five rounds with Efe Ajagba, Christian Hammer or Tony Yoka - so for Joyce to let him even reach the halfway point has to be considered putting over par (if not a disastrous failure and ill portent for the DDD clash).
Joyce inside 3 rounds, and there won't be any competitiveness. Between Dubois and him, the dubious one clearly took the harder fight. As I would expect Pfeiffer to be able to easily dismiss Wallish inside 5 too.
Joyce KO/TKO in 2 rounds. Wallisch is turning up to lay down. He is a no hoper at this level and Joyce levels him early. It is a good no risk warm up for the Dubois fight. Dubois has a slightly harder warm up fight than Joyce.
Much like Dinu a talented guy with little drive. Losing the zero took a lot of the pressure off and now he's content with losing and being the opponent. Don't think he had as high of a ceiling a Dinu potentially did but during the former half of the last decade he was a solid high euro level guy as far as the eye test goes. Think he would have caused Joyce some problems then. Now he's content to just lie down.
This content is protected This version would have made it interesting for a few rounds at least. But that was an undefeated Wallisch not Wall of Ish.
I am NOT predicting the upset here. I fully expect Joyce to win handily. But... When a guy like Joyce, who has dramatic flaws, not a lot of experience, and is being hyped a bit past his ability level, takes a "tune-up" or "stay-busy" against a guy like Wallisch, who had been fighting below his demonstrated level, upsets are not uncommon. It is a matter of the better fighter coming in expecting a sparring match and the bottom-end guy intending to rebuild his career. Is it going to happen? I don't think so. If Joyce is focused, it ends early. But it wouldn't shock me either.
True but I think Dubois faces the greater danger of an upset, as 1) Pfeifer is probably better than current Wall of Ish at this point, and 2) I just don't think Joyce is as overall flawed as Dubois.
I am not terribly sold on either guy. Both look to me like they telegraph what they are doing. Everything I said applies just as much to Dubois and Pfeifer.
Negotiations didn’t stall with Dubois. The fight was scheduled for April.They did the pressers.Then it was put back to June or July and now is rescheduled for October.
