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oe Joyce knows exactly what’s on the line when he takes on Zhilei Zhang for a second time in London this weekend: everything.
The Londoner might not get another chance if he loses again at Wembley Arena on Saturday night. He will find himself, at 37 years old, at the back of the queue for a heavyweight world title.
Crazy to think just five months ago, as the promising challenger, he looked set to fight WBA, WBO, IBF and IBO king Oleksandr Usyk and now his entire career seems to rest on avenging defeat by ‘Big Bang’ Zhang.
Joyce admits he may have overlooked the 40-year-old in the capital in April as a stunned Copper Box crowd watched the man from Henan province dismantle the previously unbeaten Putney fighter in the first defence of his WBO interim crown. A repeat doesn’t bear thinking about.
“It just showed me maybe I’d taken my foot off the gas slightly. It was a wake-up call that things needed to change in the team and in myself going forward, to get right for this time around. We’ve been forced into change to get the best out of me,” he said.
“I don’t think about losses, I believe I’ll beat him this time around and the loss in April will have been just a bump in the road.”
Joyce is used to being the one perennially written off, his granite chin forgotten by many until the ‘Juggernaut’ surfaces on fight night.
Weighing in at his lightest ever – a surprising 18 stone, two ounces (256lb) – was a factor. The Briton needs to be bigger if he is to reverse the result.
“Yeah, normally it’s the other way around and people have underrated me,” Joyce reflects. “We were a bit caught up in the hype beforehand, me and my team were talking about what’s next. I guess we overlooked him a little bit. We were talking about my chin. It’s not a good look and I need to get back to winning ways.”
Thankfully for the Olympic silver medallist, he had a rematch clause. Making it second time lucky against Zhang may just mean those wasted five months have not done so much damage.
Usyk retained his belts with a ninth-round knockout of Joyce’s Queensberry stablemate Daniel Dubois a month ago and victory this weekend would put Joyce right back into contention for a shot at the Ukrainian.
“When I get the win, it will be like nothing’s changed really,” insists Joyce. “It was a good fight last time and it needs to be a better fight for me this time, making sure I’ve got everything right in camp.
“It’s the second time I’m doing camp for a southpaw so I have the practice now. He knows exactly what to do.”
But how does Joyce close the gap and make it a different fight? It was hard to see it in the immediate aftermath of his sorry loss the first time around, right eye bruised and shut as he lost his ‘0’.
Many believed he would be mad to take on Zhang again but it’s crucial now, at 37, that he doesn’t lose more time by losing.
“It’s not like I got knocked out or anything, I just got my eye all bruised and it had to be stopped,” Joyce says. “As losses go, it’s not that bad. I need to improve on everything and come back bigger and stronger and go for the title. I’ve got to get my tactics right, my body, my weight. I’ll be more of a force to be reckoned with.
“I’m practising to combat what he’ll throw at me. I’m really focused on Zhang and beating him. Maybe it taught me some lessons I needed to know.”
And Joyce is certain the state of his face at the time made people think he was more beaten-up than he was following the sixth-round technical knockout.
He admits the immediate rematch saves him “going the long way around” when it comes to the world-title mix next year.
He added: “It looked worse than it was, there was no damage to the eye. The swelling went down within a week and there was bruising on my ears so I couldn’t sleep on that side.
“It was a hard pill to swallow at the time but I felt I could have carried on fighting. I could still slightly see out of the eye, I could count (the referee’s) fingers.”
Was it stopped too soon, one minute and 23 seconds into round six? “No, no,” replies Joyce. “I thought it was stopped at the right time. It was very good, he was very accurate, but it was quicker than I expected.
“I lived to fight another day.”
That day, he knows, now looks like the most crucial for him yet.
Zhang vs Joyce II will be shown live on TNT Sports. Tickets are available now from AXS.com and ticketmaster.co.uk
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