It looks like the end for Joe Joyce in the boxing ring.
On Saturday in Moscow, Joyce turned away, waved his right hand in surrender, and was stopped with about 50 seconds left in round 11.
Ten summers ago, in a different fighting world, Joyce should have won the gold medal in the final at the Rio Olympics.
Joyce is now 40. He was once avoided, respected, feared and held the WBO interim heavyweight title, but the unforgiving business he chose started to take a heavy toll.
The awful end to Saturday’s fight was a reminder that boxing is not an easy game to play; Joyce was helpless in the ring for about five seconds as the referee hesitated; he dropped his hands in total defeat and his opponent, Artem Suslenkov, had about six free shots.
It could have been so very different for Joyce; it is easy to forget what he achieved and the run of wins that he was on before it started to all go wrong in 2023.
Joyce has had multiple promoters, advisers, managers and trainers during his 21 professional fights and nine-year career. It is too easy to pin his decline and rapid fall on the changes he seemed to constantly make in his boxing life. The truth is far easier to understand; Joyce just ran out of resilience. Nobody can help with that, sorry.
As an amateur, Joyce won medals at the Europeans and Worlds, a gold at the Commonwealth Games, and that infamous silver in Rio. He was then matched hard, fast-tracked as a professional, and was soon beating seasoned men.
In 2020, when he had won 11 straight, including 10 by stoppage, he was matched behind closed doors with Daniel Dubois, who was unbeaten in 15, for the British, Commonwealth and European titles; Joyce forced Dubois to quit in round 10. Dubois is the current WBO heavyweight champion. Dubois suffered an eye injury, and the pair pushed themselves to the very limit in a brutal fight to watch from ringside.
More wins against world-class heavyweights followed for Joyce, and then in late 2022, he knocked out former world champion Joe Parker. The win made Joyce the WBO interim champion, but he also received the unofficial title of avoided challenger. At that time, Oleksandr Usyk held three of the belts, and he had business elsewhere, and so did Tyson Fury, the WBC incumbent. Joyce, known as the Juggernaut, was frozen out. Both champions had easier and more lucrative fights scheduled; Usyk defended his titles against Dubois and Fury met the MMA king, Francis Ngannou; Joyce was ignored.
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And then, in April of 2023, it started to go wrong in spectacular style. Joyce lost the first of two fights against Zhilei Zhang, who was also being avoided. The second loss, in September of 2023, was not easy to watch. Perhaps, in the savage wake of the second Zhang fight, that was the critical moment to be brutally honest and make some hard decisions.
There was a routine, easy win, and then three consecutive defeats, including the horrible night on Saturday in Moscow. Joyce has now lost five of his last six and been hurt, dropped and stopped in three of those fights. The great wins, the WBO interim title, the Olympic silver medal are just brief flashes in history now, glorious moments that are gone forever.
Joyce will take some time, look back at the Suslenkov fights, seek guidance, listen to the voices, and make some hard decisions about his future. He really was a major contender once upon a time in the boxing ring. And he was always a gentleman to deal with.
