I don’t think either one was bad at the time they were made, so even though we are saying “in retrospect” I struggle to call either bad matchmaking, because matches are never made knowing the outcome. On paper, both seem like very suitable matches. Helenius can punch, sure, but also he gets stopped by anyone even near the top contenders of the ranking, and is barely even a gatekeeper at this point. It was a good time and fight to see where Kownacki was at…. And we found out! Joyce - Zhang were (and realistically are) at a similar level. Outside of a title shot, fighting each other is about the best they could do, and I don’t see any fights with a similar level of opposition being much less risky.
I'd rather see contenders come unstuck now and then than suspect they are all being protected by shrewd match-making. Once a fighter has defeated a few contenders or fringe contenders (as Joyce and Kownacki had done) it should be expected for them to be willing to match with pretty much any opponent. If Kownacki and Joyce were 'too green' and stepping up, we could call it bad match-making. But they'd defeated fighters who were on paper as good or better than Helenius/Zhang. RE: Zhilei Zhang, it is a great story how he almost completely slipped away from ever being 'discovered' as a top-flight contender. Only due to a list of contenders turning down the eliminator with Hrgovic (in 2021 and 2022) that Zhang came to the foreground. Now a few fights later he's holding his own among the division's best, at 41 years old - and one of the most exciting punchers out there.
This. Kownacki was always going to get stopped, seeing as his only from of defence is using his chin to block punches. It just happened to be Helenius in the ring with him that night Whereas coming off the Parker win, there were lots of winnable styles for Joyce - but he and Frank picked a very tough style, a southpaw as big as him with power in both hands and a sharp counter puncher.
Neither of these were really bad matchmaking. Fat Adam should've drowned and ran over old Helenius. He was just far more fragile than we believed. Joyce/Zhang should've been damn near 50/50, Joyce just turned out to be fighting his equal or superior in terms of durability.
Kownacki Helenius because Joyce looked like a top five fighter, whereas Kownacki obviously needed good matchmaking. I thought after Martin they were going to make a big star out of Kownacki...no because of his ability (he hasn't got much) but because they had put him in a place where they could walk him into a shot, and those same rabid Polish fans who supported Golata would serve as a base. Then they threw him in with a puncher...
Without knowing how hard Zhang truly hit, He actually seemed tailor made for Joyce, He was a guy with a bad engine who had very low output, Joyce had a good chin so even if he got caught a couple of times he'd be able to take them and eventually he'd ware down zhang and stop him... Obviously that's now how it worked out but that was probably the thought process behind it.
Kownacki-Helenius wasn't bad matchmaking, Kownacki should have beaten Helenius who was a fringe contender at best. It really should have been a stay busy fight if Kownacki was who he was hyped to be. But he obviously wasn't what he was hyped to be. I think the Joyce-Zhang fight was worse because he didn't have to fight Zhang, who was a dangerous puncher albeit flawed. But Zhang has a large Chinese fanbase and it was a marketable fight. Now the rematch was terrible matchmaking. I forget where I read it but immediate rematches should be for fights that were competitive the fight time around. Joyce-Zhang wasn't competitive.
