Tyson Fury has weighed in on this weekend’s WBO Interim heavyweight title fight between Zhilei Zhang and Joe Joyce.
Zhang comprehensively beat Joyce in April, stopping the Londoner in six rounds. Joyce seemed totally bemused by Zhang’s southpaw style and was unable to build any momentum. The fight was officially stopped due to damage around Joyce’s right eye but he had been hurt more than once and although he continued to will himself forward, he appeared to have run out of ideas.
Fury, the Lineal and WBC heavyweight champion, volunteered to help Joyce prepare for the fight, offering him, ‘as many rounds as he wants’ of southpaw sparring but the Olympic bronze medallist instead took himself back to Las Vegas where he has prepared with long time trainer, Ismael Salas.
Joyce is promising to be heavier, more focused and better prepared tactically for what is a career defining night. Another defeat would put him to the back of the queue for a title shot in a stagnant heavyweight division.
Fury wasn’t surprised by the outcome of the first fight and feels like Joyce’s decision to reject his offer of help has greatly reduced his chances of gaining revenge this weekend.
“He got beat like I thought he would,” Fury told Dev Shani for Queensberry Promotions. “Me and Shane [his brother] thought that Zhang would beat him. I actually thought that Joe would have to get up off the floor a couple of times and claw a win back, maybe, if he took him a few rounds. Obviously he didn’t and he got beat.
“I told Joe – live on the internet – that if he came to Morecombe Bay I’d almost guarantee him a win over Zhang. He didn’t, he went to Vegas. You can’t help somebody who doesn’t want to be helped. It is what it is.”
Zhang’s team are confident of repeating the victory over Joyce and have begun to beat the drum for a future fight with ‘The Gypsy King’. Fury did show Zhang respect, tabbing the heavy handed southpaw as a tougher challenge than unified champion, Oleksandr Usyk, and was unwilling to lay out his failsafe blueprint for beating a man who could one day end up stood opposite him in the ring
“I can’t tell you that. That would be giving my training secrets away but let me just say, make no mistakes about it, if Joe had come up to Morecombe Bay he would have smashed Zhang,” Fury said. “Now I’m not so sure. You have to favour the Chinese man, purely on the fact that he’s already beaten him once and if he doesn’t do something different in the next fight and it goes down the same road, he’ll beat him again.
“I think he’s a very tough opponent and he’s a big southpaw punching man. He’s not like Usyk, a feather duster jibbing and jabbing around the ring. This man is trying to take your brains out. He’s 6ft 6in and twenty stone. He’s a very different customer and very dangerous.”