Was Joe Joyce a hypejob all along? Zhang rematch will say all that needs to be said.

Come on, everyone knew Joyce's limitations going into the to Zhang fight. I don't think you can overrate someone when everyone can see the glaring weaknesses.

Joyce is known for 5 things:

- Big stature
- Iron chin
- High workrate
- Bad defense
- Relatively slow handspeed

Zhang was the perfect guy to take advantage of all his weaknesses, but most fighters can't. They don't punch hard enough and they can't keep him off.

Joyce is like Margarito. He will run over most people, but then you run into a bad stylistic matchup like Mosley. Zhang is his Mosley.

 

He was very overrated after the dubois fight until zhang fight. Dubois was overrated before Joyce fight now Zhang is overrated by a lot of people. It recency bias.

 

It's not just that - he fails the eye test against second rate fighters... it's okay to fail the eye test against a master technician or a slippery unorthodox character - Joyce hasn't really fought anyone who fits either description as a pro.

That and he's very slow and has a poor defence that requires his (admittedly decent) chin to take stuff flush that he should be able to avoid if he was any good...

It's impressive that he manages to be as effective as he does despite these failings - and in that sense it's not so surprising that many people didn't rate his chances of stepping up through the levels... if anything, it's more surprising that as many people rated him so far above what he'd proved himself capable of, IMHO.

 

If those are the criteria you want discussions to go by then we might as well all **** off and do something else - there's no discussion at all to be had here if you're going to set the bar as high as that...

If you're that much of a casual that you darent even have an opinion of your own, you might want to stick to watching on the telly where ex-pro's with chips on their shoulders can pontificate verifiable nonsense unchallenged... and the rest of us can use this message board for the purpose of exists for.

Smh.

 

Was underrated then overrated....now heading back to being underrated again. Seems to be some strange reads on this guy.

 

Yes and no.

Yes, his chin has always been exaggerated by overzealous fans online. That's not a defence if you block punches with your face. A "tactic" like that gets you in trouble sooner or later. Also, Joe is slower than an elderly snail with a mobility problem.

But no, he is not overrated. A late starter who became an Olympic medalist and who hits as hard as a freight train but also has freakish stamina considering his size and age.

People just can't take all these factors into account when assessing fighters - it's either black or white with them so a lot of people overrate Joyce and at the same time, a lot of other people criminally underrate him.

 

It's interesting the first time he fights a guy his size with power he gets TKO'd.
And that guy was 40 years old.

 

Losing a fight doesn't make someone a hype job all of a sudden. Joyce annihilating Parker was one of the most impressive heavyweight performances in recent years.

Joyce is solid and so is Zhang.

 

No just the worst style matchup for him

Fast left hand with thunder power

 

Big strong tough, good endurance. Extremely slow and predictable.

 

Probably a bit overated but stopping Parker was impressive, I think the only other fighter that might do it is Wilder or Fury if he felt like it. I don't recall anyone thinking he would beat Fury or Usyk, and while his limitations are clear, I still think he would beat more of the top 15 than not.

 

Disregarded everything else after reading this.

 

Zhang looks in shape. He lost fat.

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