Joyce KO'd Parker who has a great chin and also outboxed him. Parker is better now than he was. Joyce would get beat by Usyk or Fury, but he'd cause everyone problems.
If he was so good, they would have stepped him up before 37. He doesn't even have Joshua's ability. 40 year old Wlad would have KO'd Joyce pretty easy that night at Wembley. Too slow, too predictable, too easy to hit. Wilder would have KO'd him before the Fury fights. Just think of Fury getting clipped and nailed pressuring Wilder, and how fast Fury's feet and defences are compared to Joyce. Joyce would come forward and just eat RHs until he fell over.
Maybe it’s just me but he looked slower in the Parker fight than before. His iron chin was what won him the fight. As he gets older he will be even slower and I think that is what the top guys are doing, aging him.
He was an armature until 2016. He had to make a name for himself for the big lads to fight him. He's never ducked anyone. Took on a high risk DDD with a few pro fights behind him.
I do not know a great deal about Joyce, & want to throw a question or two to those who do. Why did Joyce turn pro so late, & do you think he suffers from it more, or benefits from lack of accumulated damage? Does he just naturally have not much speed? And most importantly, how at 37, & especially being so big, now weighing in over 270 at 6'6" without being heavy-so much more muscle than say Tyson Fury-does he maintain such a work rate? Is this the opposite of his speed, like about his muscle fiber type? Just a natural gift? What other men so big can throw at such volume, & not mostly jabs?
He doesn't take as many clean punches as the media portray. It never fails to amaze me how media narratives shape opinion. Don't get me wrong he does eat leather and more than most, but he rides a hellva lot of punches. Just witness how he throws his jab, weight already moving to the back foot and swaying away a split second after he's landed it. In these circumstances, if he gets hit it's at the very end of the punch. Yes, sometimes he gets hit clean and one day that might/will catch him out, but he's more defensively sound than he's given credit for...
He didn't pick up boxing until he was 22 so started late. So he had a 9 years as an amateur and didn't really begin having success on the international stage until 2013 when he won a bronze at the European championships. He also likely wanted to fight at the Olympics in 2016 which was his first Olympics, which is why he turned pro so late. From what I understand there are different muscle types, some give you more speed while others more endurance. I assume Joyce has predominantly the latter muscle fibre type, hence his lack of speed but also impressive stamina. I also think he varies the power of his punches, he throws a lot of light punches and then mixes in harder punches. Which is why he will pound on an opponent landing many shots which don't seem to have that much effect but then suddenly he'll land a shot and flatten his opponent. So that I think is also why he can throw so many shots. That and he seems very relaxed and chilled in and out of the ring, he doesn't waste energy by getting too pumped up. The only other big man I think throws anywhere near as many punches was Vitali. Another guy who wasn't that quick and was very relaxed in the ring.
Usyk does this too. I'm convinced suddenly changing-up the power of a shot after the opponent has got tuned to taking the same shot over and over again with less power is a really effective technique when you don't have a one-punch KO punch. It's like the central nervous system suddenly gets overloaded because its just downloaded more data than it expected to compute...