Look at the film of Joyce beating Parker and the fighter who lost to Hrgovic, his slowness has grown two fold. He fights more like a 49 year old than a 39 year old. Why Joyce's team let him immediately rematch Zhang after that beating was a mystery to me, that brutal KO put him on his current path of gatekeeper..
If his career was managed better, he’d just have a slightly better resume. He was never good enough to beat guys like AJ, Usyk, or Fury. He might have beaten Wilder though, but that fight would’ve never happened anyway.
....mmm, I'm really not sure. He might STILL be a nightmare for AJ. I don't think AJ has the kind of dig to spark him and he still keeps coming, he's like a ****in' gloved up zombie. This.might cause AJ to revert to type and go into panic mode. Interesting fight and one I suspect team AJ will STILL want no part of. I don't think Joyce looked nearly as bad as many are saying the other night, but that depends on how we rate Hrgovic. Before Dubois battered him he was the divisions bogeyman, and I'm not commenting on how accurate that perception was, just sayin'. Boxing is one of the most revisionist sports around, AJ was always rubbish, Wilder is a bum, Fury wasn't all that etc etc. Wait for Usyk to get smashed by a big up and comer and the naysayers will be out for him too. Hrgovic deserves a lpt of praise in my eyes. He gutted that out the other night and it was not an easy nights work. Joe never is. Unless you are blessed with huge power, impeccable timing, fast hands and catch him early.
Using your face to stop punches will eventually catch up to you. His style of boxing requires non stop pressure , eating punishment, and grinding his opponent down. That just will not work with age. Now he just eat punches.
To be fair, Zhang was a lot of a nobody at the time... He'd only had two fights against guys from the top 200 and hadn't won either of them (draw against Forrest and razor thin points loss to Hrgovic, who had also done ✓nothing). He hadn't knocked out anyone with a known top quality chin at all before Joyce - but then he hadn't beaten, let alone knocked out, anyone known to be remotely decent fullstop, either. Realistically, it was probably seen as a fairly light touch - an old guy who hadn't done much, and was really only known at all for losing the Olympic final to Joshua... Did they underestimate him? In hindsight yes, but you can see exactly why they weren't expecting him to be what he actually was.
I think it's quite well known that I don't rate Wilder... But. There's also a good chance Joyce would've got smashed. If he could keep Wilder on the back foot he'd nullify him... But give Wilder time and space to throw full weight behind a punch and he'd do damage - he normally got that because his opponents were (mostly) pretty crap, but Joyce inability to avoid punches might just have fed into exactly what he needed (and there's zero question Joyce would've been his best win by far).
But the forum, at the time, thought Joyce had one of the greatest chins ever too. Wrong on both counts.
joyce was never good. he was tough, but boxed horribly. glacier slow and stationary head. when he fought zhang i picked zhang to win in the rbr. not because i thought zhang was so good, which he isnt, but because he has good timing, and i figured that was enough to catch joe any time he wanted. it was a gimme. i had even said before that fight that i couldnt understand how the guys joes fought havent figured out how to beat him. he is the easiest hw to figure out. did he get old overnight? maybe. but he wasnt going to get much further even if he was prime.
I don't actually buy the "got old" line too much. Joyce was aging like a fine wine for a while. But he did run into a seriously dangerous fighter in Zhang that was a "stylistic nightmare" as people round here are fond of saying. This seemed to massively dent his confidence which has dented his hardiness which is at least in part a function of how much you believe you can take a shot. This also might have made him more gunshy which could explain the reduced output as much as age can. It also probably physically damaged him and made him more vulnerable in that way as well. It also probably demoralised him so I doubt he has trained with the same ferocity and ambition since. Everything above can be multiplied again as a result of the Chisora loss. Yea he's now finished. Yea age is a consideration. But I don't think it's the defining factor.