What next for Joe Joyce?

I've always thought Parker would be a hard fight for him. Either that or another top prospect like Yoka or Hrgovic, no time to mess around. Ortiz would have nothing to offer anymore.

 

Yeah, I said it, some really fancied him. Some. Most just reckoned him a compelling contender who added considerable interest to the mix. At a point in time, it wasn't outlandish to reckon him among the division's five most handy fighters. I wouldn't exactly knock anyone for having him outside the five, for that matter, but it certainly wasn't crazy talk to put him in that discussion around 2016. Let's apply some perspective — a club of hardcore believers on forums (typically Cuban boxing school fetishists) and a general industry-wide estimation that he was a Top 5 fighter isn't tantamount to a runaway hype train.

To address the matter of the guys you keep touting over him, let's take Chisora. Sure, Dereck has a résumé full of significant names, but he lost to most of them. Actually, all of them, leastways officially, unless we consider Takam a significant name (guess he's borderline) — bear in mind, I'm not someone who is predisposed to talking Chisora down, having always counted him as a personal favorite at the weight (my posting back catalogue proves as much) and believing he should hold a clear win over an undefeated Helenius, a close win over Dillian Whyte (could conceivably have been two wins over Whyte if their bouts had been officiated impartially) and arguably a close win over Joe Parker, with really respectable showings against the elder Klitschko and Sasha Usyk to his credit.

Chisora's worth is somewhat underestimated on these pages, though he hasn't always helped his case in consistency terms. But in describing Ortiz as a career gatekeeper, you're wilfully underestimating that guy's worth on account of some arbitrary peeve, as if he's the first ever to be widely considered a contender without having a whole stack of particularly creditable victories against fellow contenders to his name. On the contrary, we see it all the time. Was Errol Spence not a legitimate contender prior to facing Kell Brook, notwithstanding the fact that the best competition he'd faced was a fringe guy in Leonard Bundu and a Chris Algieri who was unproven at '47? Or was he a gatekeeper?

Let's not talk like Ortiz was ever as underwhelming as a Kevin Johnson or something.

Worth noting;
Friend Chisora has been something of a tough-luck kid on the one hand, but, on the other, he's also been somewhat fortuitously positioned to gain as many opportunities as he's had. Circumstances haven't been unfavorable to him in that respect, even after turning in some flat, uninspired performances in significant fights in the middle phase of his career (i.e. post-Haye but pre-Takam). This isn't the first time I've observed the paradox, as it happens;

While Chisora's usefulness has led to many opportunities under Hearn, it can verily be argued — speculatively, yes, but also quite plausibly — that Ortiz was held back during his time under the same promoter due to the perceived threat he posed to more bankable names in the stable.

This assessment doesn't really amount to a hill of beans. It's as much of a convenient reach as the whole 'AJ's Wlad was such a different fighter to Fury's Wlad' argument. Jennings was one fight, eight months and not a ton of damage removed from a very creditable performance against a reigning champ whose prior outing had met with some considerable acclaim as one of his best performances in years (though the prevailing wisdom of the time tends to be conveniently forgotten nowadays). Jennings took on the man at the weight and did a better job of extending him than anyone had in several years. He wasn't another Alex Leapai. In Ortiz, though, he immediately faced another quality boxer who posed a markedly different stylistic challenge that he was less equipped/able to adapt to. Even if a contemporaneous Jennings camp insider were to surface and tell me that Bryant had been less motivated or had prepared less studiously for Ortiz than for Klitschko, it still wouldn't/shouldn't move me. That would be on Jennings, credit can't be deducted for Ortiz for that. He did his job and thoroughly whooped a man who was coming off a strong performance.

I'd never say otherwise. 9–3 to 8–4 type of fight in Wlad's favor. What vets would call close-ish, but clear. Certainly competitive, which precious few had truly managed to be with Klitschko for some years.

The above is wandering into unintelligible territory, but I'll press on.

Jennings proved he was a viable contender by the manner of his performance against Wladimir. Again, nobody had given the younger Klitschko as good of a go in several years. It doesn't really matter if Jennings' time as a viable contender was brief and practically ended with the beating from Ortiz. He was in the mix for a time and he performed accordingly when his shot came.

Yeah, I said, he was decrepit. But he wasn't substantially more decrepit than when he twice fought David Price, a pretender with a good punch he'd been savvy enough to expose notwithstanding his advanced years and rickety state. Which was my point. If Ortiz was such a gatekeeper, even that version of Thompson would've at least given him some trouble or extended him (rather, he was battered).

So Jennings outperformed Thompson in their respective tilts at the heavyweight crown, but Jennings was only ever a gatekeeper while Thompson was once a legitimate contender? Who did Thompson ever beat for such a rubber-stamped status? Let's at least apply these standards evenly.

I'll restate;

It's your right to state that Ortiz was never more than a gatekeeper, of course. I just think it's a really tough position to defend.

It doesn't matter much to me what we call him at this stage. Any of the other hopefuls in the Top 10 should be beating him. (Though, his pulling out the victory over Martin in his current state does speak some to the considerable quality he once possessed.)

 

Joyce needs to fight another top ten fighter. Time is not on his side.

 

It wouldn’t surprise me to learn that no one wants to fight Joe!

He’s a potential nightmare for anyone including the belt holders and the other contenders.
Even if Fury fought him he’d have to stink the place out and look awful to beat him, Usyk knows he may well get beat up an pd stopped, Joshua could turn out like Dubois, Whyte would get bullied and beat, Wilder would see his career ended and his big right get diminished as Joyce took it all night with no effect.

The other up and coming fighters will want no part of him either, they look at Dubois and see all that potential being dismantled and don’t want that for themselves so steer clear of JJ.

He’s hard to match up!