Tag: Joe Joyce

Chisora. Doomed to a banquet of consequences

It is almost twenty years since Evander Holyfield lost by Unanimous Decision to Larry Donald at New York’s Madison Square Garden for the vacant NABA Heavyweight title. A result and performance which left the wilting 42-year-old former Heavyweight Champion as a peripheral figure in the title picture and, to use the cinematic boxing vernacular, ‘all washed up.’

The announcement of Derek Chisora’s proposed fight with Joe Joyce on July 27th, two heavyweights of advancing years with little prospect of recapturing youth or relevance looks like a fight too far for Chisora. It brought to mind the New York State Athletic Commission’s (NYSAC) attempt to discourage Evander Holyfield from boxing on following his loss to perennial contender Larry Donald.

Frank Warren, the promoter of July’s London card, naturally feels entirely different about the match up: “Two top London heavies fighting it out for a place back at the top table promises to deliver a cracking scrap. The winner is right back in business, with no real place to go for the loser.”

At this stage, with concerns for how much of Chisora remains, Joyce could prove to be the most dangerous opponent he could face.

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Dubois can expose the Miller myth

Twice suspended for failed PED tests, Jarell Miller has still received an invitation back to the big time with a match versus Daniel Dubois

Article first appeared on Gambling.com

Dubois to win by decision 15/8 with BETVICTOR

On Saturday in Riyhad, Saudi Arabia, amidst the huge Day or Reckoning card, Daniel Dubois arrives at a crossroads in his boxing career. Triumph, and some of the lustre lost in defeat to Joe Joyce and Oleksander Usyk will be restored, defeat, and the suggestion Dubois lacks the ability and resolve to succeed at world-level will be confirmed.

Now aged 26, Dubois, 19-2 (18ko), was long-marketed by Hall of Fame promoter Frank Warren as the future of the division. The heir to the throne variously occupied by Fury, Joshua and Usyk.

The defeat to Joyce back in 2020, a knockout loss in which Dubois suffered a broken orbital bone around his eye and opted to kneel and take the 10-count when ahead on the cards, curbed excitement about his prospects. Warren too, seemed discouraged. It posed the question; is Dubois willing to risk, in the way the greats often must, to land the prize?

Continue reading “Dubois can expose the Miller myth” →
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No choice for Joyce in Zhang rematch

Article first appeared on gambling.com

This Saturday at London’s OVO Wembley Arena, lumbering Brit Joe Joyce, 16-1 (14ko), will seek to reclaim that which he lost in defeat to Zhilei Zhang, 25-1-1(20ko) earlier this year. The Chinese big man not only broke Joyce’s unbeaten record and claimed the WBO Interim title Joyce had held since beating Daniel Dubois, he also wrecked the promotional narrative of Joyce as the division’s boogeymen.

Repeat or revenge themes are common in boxing. Historically, the original victor triumphs again and often more definitively. Such was Zhang’s dominance in the first encounter that a clearer conclusion in Saturday’s rematch is hard to conjure but more troubling for Joyce’s advocates is; how does Joyce correct the conspicuous defensive deficiencies Zhang exposed?

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Chisora the absorber, pummelled for pay and our ghoulish perversion

Derek Chisora has been a brave and capable heavyweight. His bravery was the great enabler of his third fight with Tyson Fury. The prolonged pummelling he endured entirely unnecessary.

It is the nature of the sport of boxing, the pursuit of glory at potentially grave personal cost, both the explicit and the disguised, that participants and observers are pushed to their extremes of tolerance. The third meeting between Tyson Fury and Derek Chisora for the Heavyweight title was a luminous example in this particular collection of boxing’s gloomiest encounters. All involved, from the last spectator to those carrying buckets of spit, are complicit in permitting and encouraging Saturday’s prolonged brutality.

As expected, Derek Chisora was pummelled for thirty or more minutes. The masquerade of competitiveness tossed aside from the second round. Reality replaced salesmanship. Facts displaced fantasy.

Predictable. Pitiless.

Continue reading “Chisora the absorber, pummelled for pay and our ghoulish perversion” →
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Joyce’s chin, otherworldly, is an asset and a deterrent

The weekend reluctantly succumbs to a grumbling Monday, children scramble onto back seats and the drizzle of late September sneers at those too lazy to cut the lawn the day before. In the ensuing silence, thoughts, ideas compete, ebbing and flowing for those of us wrestling with obligation, the should dos afforded by time and solitude.

Boxing lurches in to frame among the unwashed breakfast pots, the dogs that need exercise and the bill that needs paying. It isn’t always this way. Golovkin and Canelo III came and went leaving little fat to chew on by the Monday, despite the generational greatness of the pairing. A tired episode in a great rivalry. The money laden, but inferior, Godfather III if you will. Years too late.

Into the wash of their encounter stepped Shakur Stevenson, the next, next Pretty Boy. He has predecessors as would be successor to Floyd and his Uber-wealth. 25 years old and 22 ounces over the limit. He won. Cemented his status. But missing weight brought more headlines than the fight. The nature of the modern mediums. Words, failure, toxicity create more wake than quality, preparation, success.

And so it fell to the heavyweights in Manchester, England. The two nice guys called Joe, Joyce and Parker, met in a crossroads bout. Was this the top of Joyce’s arc or could he continue his climb versus Parker, a man who had soared with Joshua and Ruiz already? Expectations had been modest. Joyce, huge, lumbering but effective. Parker, stout, sharper and seasoned.

Both excelled. And their bruising encounter revealed a new player at the top of the division.

Continue reading “Joyce’s chin, otherworldly, is an asset and a deterrent” →
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Andy Lee, a young face with an old voice, creates doubt in the script for Joyce v Parker

When in doubt, tell the truth.
Mark Twain, Humourist and novelist, (1835-1910)

Any boxing match worth its salt is a cocktail of knowns and unknowns. Proposing multiple potential outcomes, paradoxical in the conflict of conviction and uncertainty those possibilities provoke. Fight week should play with those conclusions, tease doubt, shift perspective and stimulate debate for those with the wisdom to embrace the rumination rather than dismiss anything that doesn’t validate their own opinion. A common failing in the echo chamber of our own social media streams.

This weekend’s heavyweight battle between Joe Joyce and Joseph Parker doesn’t possess all of those ingredients. As a result it had failed to toy with fight fan’s interest as the last days and hours before the first bell tick away in the way the best fights usually do. Both Joes possess strengths and weaknesses, present a variance of form and experience and offer complimentary styles too. There has always been much to like in the match up. The bout boasts sufficient jeopardy and reward for the victor and vanquished to encourage a fierce commitment from the two gentlemanly protagonists too.

Continue reading “Andy Lee, a young face with an old voice, creates doubt in the script for Joyce v Parker” →
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Knowing when to quit (featuring Iron Mike and Daniel Dubois)

I don’t need permission

Make my own decisions

Robert Barisford Brown, (1969- ), My Prerogative

There was an unerring symbiosis between Saturday night’s principle contests. The old and the new, the real and the forged, the premature and the belated. A pair of bookends to boxing’s top shelf of literature.

In London, unbeaten heavyweights Joe Joyce and Daniel Dubois duked it out to an 8 second TikTok loop of crowd noise for a prize as old as the gloved sport they excel in. While across the pond, Mike Tyson and Roy Jones Jnr., two fighters who predate Jurassic Park, tried to dig up the remnants of their glorious past against an LP of greatest hits for a belt even the WBC couldn’t produce in time.

Continue reading “Knowing when to quit (featuring Iron Mike and Daniel Dubois)” →
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Dubois and Joyce clash in the heavyweight foothills

Don’t be afraid to take a big step, you can’t cross a chasm in two small jumps.

David Lloyd George, Politician
1863-1945

It is all too rare for unbeaten prospects to fight while still in the foothill stages of their climb toward boxing’s mountain top. So numerous and divergent are the paths to boxing’s summit; and the world titles to be found there, a prize broader and less elusive than the zenith it once represented, that exciting contenders often progress in isolation of each other. The fear of falling back from the trail tends to prove more persuasive than the rewards found in victory or the lessons of defeat.

On Saturday night, British heavyweights Daniel Dubois and Joe Joyce will dispense with the unsatisfactory custom of cosmetic record padding and pitch their unresolved potential against one another. The fighters, the division, boxing fans and the sport itself will benefit from the nobility of trying to authenticate their standing as a potential world title challenger in the old fashioned way.

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Heavyweight action: Dubois v Gorman preview and tips

Article first appeared at Freebets.net

Heavyweights. Nothing demands attention like a heavyweight fight. Boxing bristles when the big men climb the steps to the squared circle, the air becomes charged, beer and handbags are put down, heads are turned. A truth that has echoed through the sport’s history and will, when unbeaten British prospects Daniel Dubois and Nathan Gorman face off for the British title, be confirmed once more this weekend.

A prize with more than a century of memories and boasting a gallery of the great, game and infamous of British boxing as former holders, the belt has, nevertheless, laid dormant since Hughie Fury beat Sam Sexton in May 2018. The two fighters, Dubois and Gorman, represent the youngest pairing to ever contest the belt at just 21 and 23 respectively. Hopefully, the belt will be kept active by the victor and that sense of history cherished and extended.

It is rare for two unbeaten fighters to meet so early in their career. Only the clash between James DeGale and George Groves a decade ago leaps to mind when searching for a comparable match up. Supported by the equally intriguing clash between Joe Joyce and Philadelphian contender Bryant Jennings, the O2 plays host to a bonanza of heavyweight action ESPN+ will televise in America and BT Sport will cover for boxing devotees here in the UK.

Top bookmakers are offering markets on this enticing contest too. Continue reading “Heavyweight action: Dubois v Gorman preview and tips” →

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Bermane Stiverne booked as ‘former champion’ for Joe Joyce

Bermane Stiverne v Deontay Wilder

If, like me, you are swimming in the tapioca of middle-age, the last vestiges of youth evaporating before narrowing eyes and a runaway appetite your exercise regime cannot keep up with, retirement represents the ultimate mirage. That fantastical, care-free and indefinite holiday we venture on when work and children have completed their consumption of our finite will and reserves of energy.

Heavyweight fighters tend to get there sooner than a typical blue collar worker or executive, often no more or less content than the rest of us and frequently troubled by the life sprawling ahead of them without purpose, routine or income. It is frustrating for those of us still governed by mortgages and the alarm clock that the mirage, once reached, is just that, a mirage. Even for those heavyweights who captured larger purses in their prime, the discomfort remains and for some, the ‘end’ is never quite conclusive enough, like a season finale written in the hope of being commissioned again.

Winning, success, money doesn’t sate the thirst, frequently it merely affords more stake to play with, to gamble with. Only in losing, often repeatedly, sometimes with enormous consequence, can the gambler stop or have the temptation rendered impotent.

Unfortunately, and particularly for heavyweights, there will always be someone, an opportunist usually, who thinks a 40-something heavyweight has either a shot at redemption or the remnants of a reputation their own, younger, fresher starlet could still capture. It can prove irresistible for heavyweights who care not for the preservation of that reputation or still crave the adrenalin of competition. Fight a novice or emerging prospect for a lump of cash? Why not?

On Saturday 23rd February Bermane Stiverne, 25-3-1 (21), now aged 40 and with less than three minutes of ring time since November 2015, will face British prospect Joe Joyce in a fight notionally made to test Joyce’s readiness for the big prizes. Continue reading “Bermane Stiverne booked as ‘former champion’ for Joe Joyce” →

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Beauty is only skin deep, yeh, yeh, yeh. Gorman and Dubois win again

My first look at Nathan Gorman last year led me to reminisce about Big Bad John McDermott sitting in the back of a Range Rover eating chicken legs out of Tupperware tubs. Whilst it is clear the young heavyweight has been working hard and improving under the tutelage of Ricky Hatton up in Manchester, his physical definition remains below that associated with a professional athlete.

When viewed in the same ring as Daniel Dubois, a physical specimen of Marvel dimension, it is easy to be dismissive of the fleshy 21-year-old. However, to reach such superficial conclusion is to fail to understand the nuance that exists in the making of a good fighter and the attributes that fighter may possess, i.e. boxing isn’t a beauty pageant. Continue reading “Beauty is only skin deep, yeh, yeh, yeh. Gorman and Dubois win again” →

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Nathan Gorman, Hatton’s BFG, begins to shine

Photo: Laura Ayres/Hatton Promotions

Variety is the spice of life they say. In Nathan Gorman, British heavyweight boxing has a markedly different type of prospect to add to the flush of body beautiful contemporaries emerging in the wake of Anthony Joshua. This weekend’s victory over Mohammad Soltby was my first live exposure to the Nantwich prospect, I’ve only seen highlights and clips of his previous contests, and there was enough on display to suggest he will prove more than merely an aesthetic counterpoint to his highly regarded rivals. Continue reading “Nathan Gorman, Hatton’s BFG, begins to shine” →

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That was the boxing weekend that was (22nd Oct. 2017)

The punchers threw punches, opponents ducked and stumbled, people were drawn to their feet, the crowd howled and cheered. Women, and a few men, were heard to gasp and scream as the action, dramatic and fast moving unfolded. Momentum shifted and in the end, as the lights came up, it was hard to determine an outright winner. Inside the ring, British fighters progressed their respective causes, new stories were begun and one or two names, loaded with nostalgia for those of my generation, echoed from Saturday nights of the past.

It was a heady mix, one without the prestige or brutality of the preceding weekend’s knockouts and with the sense of a fistic hors d’oeuvre for bigger nights yet to come. Despite this, there was much to enthral and the fights and their outcomes revealed plenty about the horizons of the combatants. Continue reading “That was the boxing weekend that was (22nd Oct. 2017)” →

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Joyce challenges a boxing truism and the heavyweight status quo

When events are shifted from their established pattern or place it can cause discomfort for those of us accustomed to a certain way of doing things. People are nervous about such change, preferring the security and assurance of the familiar. It is this familiarity that makes a local, a local. Sitting in mine, watching boxing on Dave, I was drawn to some negative conclusions about the performance of heavyweight Joe Joyce on his professional debut. “Arm punches”, “Slow hands”, “He squares up.” “There is no power in his jab or his right hand.”

I said all of the above, some more than once. With the benefit of reflection and sobriety I’ve grown to be kinder to the effort of the giant Londoner. Continue reading “Joyce challenges a boxing truism and the heavyweight status quo” →

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