I don't think anything i said could be contested on the evidence of Takam's career. Who has he beaten? Chisora vs Takam was a bout that made sense because neither have beaten anybody good.
So the ref thought "Takam always does well and later he fades, so there's no chance he's going to win this, I should stop the match"? The ref shouldn't have stopped the match, Takam won all the previous rounds, in round 6 he was just trying to dodge the shots Joyce was throwing, eventually he was going to counter back. If Takam was ineffective in the first 5 rounds, then the decision would be reasonable. I say: Bad decision by ref. Why didn't the ref didn't stop the match at the end of round 3 in AJ vs Ruiz 1st match? Joshua was clearly not responding to Ruiz, he was devastated.
No obviously that wasn't what the ref was thinking, he was thinking here's a 40 year old who got badly KO'ed last time he fought in the UK, he's been rocked, taken 34 unanswered punches, isn't defending himself at all and just been rocked again and even if Takam does throw back with a big shot we already know one big punch or even 2 big punches from Takam at this stage of the fight will have no effect on Joyce and we are still in the first minute of the rd, can a 40 year old who can't hurt his opponent and isn't throwing back last another 2 minutes plus, probably not better save him from himself. Maybe the ref didn't stop the fight because AJ had dropped him badly and so had the chance to turn things around as he could hurt Ruiz Jr unlike Takam who hit Joyce with the kitchen sink and Joyce didn't even notice.
True hence why Takam is a gate keeper. He'll beat the pretenders but the genuine contenders he'll lose to, though he'll give a good account of himself.
Not the best stoppage but not the worst either. I think Takam gave Joyce a lot of trouble, and let's not forget this is a 39 year old guy that has been through the wars. Takam is slower and less active than ever, even though he still has his skills.Shave 5 years of Takam and I think he'd have stopped Joyce. This really shows how abysmal heavyweight is right now. A decent fighter at 39 years old should not be this competitive against the rising stars of a division and he could barely miss Joyce who seems to have size but little else. Joe Joyce looks to me to be a smaller, worse version of Valuev.
A gatekeeper should be able to beat decent level of opposition, but not the top level of opposition who more or less compete among themselves. This is a guy whose best wins are against shot boxers in their 40s, who weren't up to that much in their prime, such as Michael Grant, Michael Sprott and Tony Thompson. The whole purpose of a gatekeeper should be to serve as a litmus test to distinguish between the top guys and the rest. Beating Takam does not indicate that you would be competitive against a top guy.
I don't think the Thompson win was too bad, he had beaten Solis and Price in recent fights. You could criticise the resume of any gate keeper that's why they are gate keepers they don't beat the real contenders.
Valuev would be a monster in todays era, the same Valuev that got a gift decision against a shot Holyfield. Man things have really gotten bad.
Not sure if the highlights show it but if you see Takam on his stool during the last two round breaks he was really struggling for breath after Joyce's body shots in those rounds. He was only going to deteriorate so the ref got this right in my opinion.
Not a chance So your dismissive of the sheer volume of shots Joyce was landing due to Carlos and a flashy overhand right that hit every now and then And might i add never once hurt Joyce
Why would he jest? Valuev is like Joyce squared, you know how Joyce looks awful but is deceptively good. Well Valuev is like this but even more so, he looks so awful he actually loses fights he's winning it's just what he is doing is so deceptively good almost nobody can see it. Like when he was rocked by Haye, that was what it looked like to 99.99999% of those that saw it, but what he was doing was headbutting Haye's fist so hard that years later it would break Haye's toe!
