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Tyson Fury isn’t the only heavyweight he promotes that Frank Warren would happily match against Anthony Joshua.
“I think Joe Joyce would knock him out,” Warren said during an interview posted to Queensberry Promotions’ YouTube channel. “As soon as he catches him. He will walk through him.”
Warren acknowledged Joyce will encounter a dangerous opponent Saturday night at Copper Box Arena in London. Joyce (15-0, 14 KOs) is scheduled to square off against huge Chinese contender Zhang Zhilei (24-1-1, 19 KOs) in the main event of a card BT Sport 1 will air in the United Kingdom and Ireland and ESPN+ will stream in the United States.
But if the 37-year-old Joyce wins and retains his WBO interim heavyweight title, Warren wouldn’t hesitate to have the 2016 Olympic silver medalist meet Joshua in an appealing domestic showdown.
“I mean, they wanna pick up the phone and talk to us about that, we’ll do that immediately, if Joe comes through,” Warren said. “Remember, Joe’s the interim champion, so he’s the gatekeeper to the mandatory [position], the WBO mandatory. He is the gatekeeper for that fight. So, if anybody wants it, they know what they’ve gotta do. They’ve gotta fight him. And if Joshua wants to get himself into that position, we’ll gladly, gladly accommodate him for that. I can speak on behalf of Joe because Joe has told me he wants the fight.”
London’s Joyce has shown a granite chin, tremendous endurance, a consistent, stiff jab and damaging power during his rise in the heavyweight division.
The 6-foot-6, 270-pound Joyce became the first fighter to knock out former WBO champ Joseph Parker in the 11th round of Joyce’s last fight, which took place September 24 at AO Arena in Manchester, England. New Zealand’s Parker (31-3, 21 KOs) went 12 rounds with Joshua, who beat him unanimously in their 12-round title unification fight five years ago at Principality Stadium in Cardiff, Wales.
Warren was far less impressed by Joshua’s performance in another 12-round, unanimous-decision victory over Jermaine Franklin on April 1 at O2 Arena in London. The 33-year-old Joshua (25-3, 22 KOs) defeated Franklin (21-2, 14 KOs) comfortably on the scorecards (118-111, 117-111, 117-111), but Warren didn’t see the same fighter who beat Parker, Wladimir Klitschko and others during his two championship reigns.
“The interesting thing about it is,” Warren said, “they can look at all these old [Joyce] videos and dig up all this old crap from the past, and they need to keep looking there because that will hopefully give them some confidence. But when it gets down to the nitty gritty, when we get down to professional boxing, when we get down to that, when we look at improvement … AJ, no, there hasn’t been any improvement in him. But there’s definitely been an improvement in Joe Joyce.”
Keith Idec is a senior writer/columnist for BoxingScene.com. He can be reached on Twitter @Idecboxing.