Joyce to fight Hrgovic now instead of Whyte

This fight has brain damage written all over it for both. Slugfest between guys with great chins.

Joyce is clearly on the decline, but if he comes into this fight in shape (not 280+ lbs like his last few fights) he can give Hrgovic hell and might break him down late in the fight.

Hrgovic will beat the **** out of Joyce early, but if he can't hurt Dubois after landing a thousand clean right hands, I don't see him being able to stop Joyce from walking him down and getting to him eventually.

 

The other big problem for Hrgovic, of course, is he's utterly useless at winning on cards.

His poor stamina is one of the causes of that, of course, but it doesn't bode too well for him if it does go the full 12.

Barely scraping past Zhang on cards is a bit of a black mark, too - Zhang can't do points either.

 

So just to be clear... It's everyone elses fault he didn't get a good fight made?
(And by extension, he gets the credit as if he'd won).

And everyone avoided Wilder, of course (/sarc).


My position is and always has been that even if a specific fight is hard to make, a poor resume is the fault of the fighter themselves... You can't honestly convince me that absolutely nobody wanted that fight and he was desperate for it.

 

Nope. But it isn't his fault few highly rated boxers declined the IBF mandatory fight with him while not taking anything else in the process.

 

Why would they not want it?

Either the mandatory wasn't worth much at that precise moment... Or did they know they would've been wasting their time?

 

Serious question out of interest: what do you mean by slow-fast speed and the according equilibrium?

 

Joyce has the better cardio and heart so if this goes past 6 I think he wins.

 

My honest opinion is that all of these fighters did indeed avoid Hrgovic - he was a highly successful amateur with size and an iron chin and was highly thought of in the industry; they did not realise that Hrgovic had lost motivation and was ripe for the picking, so to speak.

In fairness to Hrgovic though, I do think the extended off-time probably did not help his motivation and fitness level.

 

Thanks a lot, that's pretty interesting. I will rewatch some of his fights. I like being able to make more sense of what I am seeing with a fighter and Joyce at times felt weird to understand. Are there other prominent examples of this?

Seems like it mostly makes sense for heavyweights that outweigh their opponents significantly, because i would assume that while it makes the punches harder to avoid it is always an option for the opponent to through at the same time. So you would have to be sure of having a better chin and a heavy punch even though you're not punching using your full dynamics. Makes even more sense with Joyces stamina-focussed approach.

If I understand it correctly I think there is a similar thing in foosball where sometimes players shoot with a deliberately slower speed so that the goalkeeper's reflex is over before the ball reaches him and when he switches to conscious movement the ball has already passed him.

 

This fight is perfect timing for Hrgovic.

 

Actually looking forward to this one. Hrgovic better take this one seriously. This is his chance to bounce back.

 

Many guys turned him down on the IBF list. The first guy able and willing to fight him was Zhang. They went down the list until they got to Zhang. Yoka was willing to take it but he was locked into the Bakole fight.

 

For some context, IBF rankings in January 2022:

1 NOT RATED
2 Luis Ortiz Cuba (CUB)
3 Filip Hrgovic Croatia (HRV)
4 Anthony Joshua England (ENG)
5 Tony Yoka France (FRA)
6 Joseph Joyce England (ENG)
7 Agit Kabayel Germany (GER)
8 Murat Gassiev Armenia (ARM)
9 Andy Ruiz Jr United States (USA)
10 Charles Martin United States (USA)
11 Joseph Parker New Zealand (NZL)
12 Demsey Mc Kean Australia (AUS)
13 Zhilei Zhang China (CHN)