He looked in solid shape. He paced himself better than he did vs Dubois. But its the same Hrgovic. He was pawing with the jab at times and landing big right hands over and over again. There was a lack of variety with his attack. His defense seems relatively non existent. Just jab jab and big right hands. It worked vs an old slow Joyce who looked like he had taken a bet on who can absorb the most amounts of right hands in one fight. Hrgovic needs to pump that jab with more authority and vary his attack a bit more with left hooks and the occasional uppercut. He is far too straight forward. If he actually wants to be a top 5 heavyweight again, he needs a proper coach.
Hrgovic reminds me somewhat of another underachiever Corrie Sanders. They even look similar facially. However Sanders had the huge signature win over Klitchko and had more power than Hrgovic.
Sanders had quicker hands and a strong southpaw left. Hrgovic is easy to read. Sanders was hard to read.
The only way Hrgovic should get near a title shot with that performance over a jalopy like Joyce is with a ticket at ringside.
Perhaps there's similarities in their dedication to the sport as well. Hrgovic reminds me of the odd euro fighter that used to pop up, once in a while, in the 80's. The talent is there but maybe not the heart.
I'm not impressed either. I know he took it on short notice, but his gas tank looked barely improved from the Dubois fight. Compared to when he fought Zhang, his gas tank, work rate and hand speed have all degenerated significantly.
He gets points for taking it on short notice. But a normal B- C+ performance from him. It still might be enough in the current landscape after Usyk bows out. Still hoping he can show another level though.
Hrgovic sucks. This was basically a sparring match and he arguably lost to a near 40, slow as molasses, zero-defense Joyce. Absolutely nothing about this performance was impressive by any metric. Hrgovic tried to pull an old Larry Holmes vs Mercer fighting off the ropes, but lacked the defense and ring IQ to make it work. Most crucially, he wasn't jabbing enough. It's as if he's allergic to jabbing. 250 is also probably a bit too high for someone with his style, he needs to drop some lbs and work on his footwork and head movement, bad. Anyone in the top 10 could've beaten him tonight.
It's pretty much unanimously agreed upon on here and everywhere else that he won. Uhh..... he won a unanimous decision dude. It worked. Objectively.
Yeah not sure where arguably losing came from. I wanted Joyce to win this one and even the absolute best I could see for him was a draw, and that's pretty generous. It wasn't a pretty looking win or overly impressive win sure, but Hrgovic isn't the benefactor of a robbery or anything. Right man got his hand raised.
He clearly wasn't in near to top shape. He was blowing early and had to take rounds off and fight in spurts. He looked soft at 250lbs too He really needs a proper trainer who will work on his glaring flaws which none of his trainers have obviously even tried to do because he never shows any improvement whatsoever in those areas To be fair, not many will be able withstand what Big Joe did tonight but by the same token most aren't going to be that easy to hit too albeit landing with consistency has never been an area Hrgovic has been lacking in He's been one of the most mismanaged and poorly trained fighters in recent times. A good trainer would've been working on his flaws from the outset. I still think he needs to hook up with Shane McGuigan if he's to have any chance of fulfilling his potential. He's never improved as a pro. In fact, he's actually regressed