Joe Joyce always reminded me a little bit of a real-life heavyweight Rocky.
Not because he was some limited fighter who had somehow stumbled into world-level boxing. Joyce was an Olympic silver medallist, an interim world champion and, at his best, one of the most dangerous heavyweights in the division.
It was because of the way he fought.
You could hit him.
You could hit him again.
You could probably hit him with the kitchen sink.
And Joe Joyce would still be walking towards you.
For years, that incredible punch resistance was almost treated as a superpower. It became part of the Joe Joyce experience. Opponents would land shots that looked capable of knocking down a wall and Joyce would simply keep coming.
The problem is that real life isn’t a Rocky movie.
There isn’t a training montage before the comeback. The damage doesn’t disappear when the credits roll. And repeatedly getting punched in the head by heavyweight boxers has consequences.
Which is why the conversation surrounding the Joe Joyce boxing future should have changed completely following his latest revelation.
After his stoppage defeat to Artem Suslenkov, Joyce has admitted that when he returned to his hotel, he couldn’t properly remember what had happened during the fight. He initially believed he had been doing well before watching the contest back.
At 40 years old, Joyce has now lost five of his last six fights.
Yet somehow boxing is already talking about what comes next.
For me, we’re asking the wrong question.
It isn’t who should Joe Joyce fight next?
It’s whether there should be a next opponent at all.
And after hearing that he couldn’t properly remember his latest defeat, my answer is simple.
I don’t think Joe Joyce should ever fight again.
Joe Joyce’s Latest Defeat Was Difficult to Watch
I’ll be honest: I found Joyce’s defeat to Suslenkov difficult to watch.
There comes a point when watching an ageing fighter stops feeling like watching somebody trying to rediscover former glories and starts feeling like watching a sport tell them something they don’t necessarily want to hear.
For me, Joyce reached that point.
It wasn’t simply that he lost.
Boxers lose.
Great fighters lose.
Sometimes ageing fighters can even suffer a bad defeat and return to produce something nobody expected.
But context matters when discussing the Joe Joyce boxing future.
Joyce is 40 years old.
He has lost five of his last six fights.
He has suffered multiple stoppage defeats.
And his fighting style has never exactly been built around avoiding punches.
Now add the fact that after his latest stoppage he couldn’t properly remember what had happened.
Surely that changes everything.
I’m not a doctor, and I’m certainly not going to attempt to diagnose Joe Joyce from behind a computer screen.
Only Joyce and the medical professionals examining him can properly assess his health.
But you shouldn’t need a medical degree to hear the words I couldn’t remember what happened from a 40-year-old heavyweight boxer and think perhaps another fight shouldn’t be the automatic next step.
Joe Joyce Really Was Boxing’s Rocky
The Rocky comparison sounds slightly flippant until you actually think about it.
What makes Rocky Balboa so entertaining?
He gets hit.
Constantly.
Apollo Creed hits him.
Clubber Lang hits him.
Ivan Drago practically tries to remove his head.
Rocky absorbs ridiculous amounts of punishment, somehow survives and keeps walking forwards.
It makes brilliant cinema.
Joe Joyce sometimes felt like the closest thing heavyweight boxing had to that in real life.
Except Joyce wasn’t getting hit by actors following choreography.
He was getting hit by professional heavyweight boxers.
That distinction matters.
Joyce’s chin wasn’t merely something commentators occasionally mentioned. It became central to his entire identity as a fighter.
His nickname was perfect.
The Juggernaut.
He just kept coming.
Daniel Dubois could hit him and Joyce kept coming.
Joseph Parker could hit him and Joyce kept coming.
Opponents could land clean combinations and Joyce would continue applying pressure as though nothing particularly significant had happened.
Eventually, they were often the ones who broke.
It was extraordinary to watch.
But perhaps we became too comfortable watching it.
Punch Resistance Became Part of the Entertainment
Boxing has a strange relationship with fighters who can take punishment.
We celebrate them.
We talk about granite chins.
We marvel at their toughness.
When somebody lands a huge right hand and the opponent barely reacts, the crowd loves it.
I understand why.
I’m a boxing fan too.
I’ve watched Joyce absorb punches over the years and thought exactly the same thing as everybody else.
How the hell did he take that?
But punch resistance isn’t an unlimited resource.
And being capable of remaining upright doesn’t mean punches aren’t doing damage.
That is particularly important when you’re talking about heavyweight boxing.
These aren’t little taps.
These are enormous professional athletes generating extraordinary force and directing it towards another human being’s head.
Joyce’s ability to withstand that punishment helped make him successful.
It may also be the very reason boxing should now be especially cautious about encouraging him to continue.
His Style Was Never Designed for Longevity
I’m a Joe Joyce fan, but let’s not pretend his defensive philosophy was ever particularly complicated.
The bloke practically led with his face.
That isn’t meant disrespectfully.
It worked.
Joyce possessed such extraordinary physical durability that he could fight in a way most heavyweights couldn’t.
He could accept losing exchanges because he trusted himself to keep going.
He could maintain pressure because opponents discovered that landing their best punches didn’t necessarily stop him coming forwards.
He could exhaust fighters physically and mentally.
Imagine throwing your hardest punches at a heavyweight and watching him continue walking towards you.
That must have been horrible.
It helped Joyce beat Daniel Dubois.
It helped him stop Joseph Parker.
It carried him to the brink of fighting for a heavyweight world title.
But eventually Zhilei Zhang showed us something we hadn’t really seen before.
Joe Joyce could be broken.
The Zhang Fights Changed Everything
Before Joyce fought Zhilei Zhang in 2023, his durability was almost mythical.
Then Zhang stopped him twice.
The first fight ended because Joyce’s eye had swollen horrifically.
The rematch ended far more brutally when Zhang knocked him out.
Suddenly, the heavyweight who seemingly couldn’t be stopped had suffered consecutive stoppage defeats.
Joyce returned and beat Kash Ali, but defeats against Derek Chisora, Filip Hrgovic and now Artem Suslenkov followed.
Five defeats from six.
There is no shame in any of that.
Joyce fought good heavyweights.
But careers have trajectories.
At some point, looking backwards at what a fighter used to be becomes less important than looking at what is happening in front of you.
And what we’re seeing now worries me.
I’ve previously written about whether Joyce had reached the point where retirement was the sensible option:
At that stage, there was still an argument to have.
After this latest revelation, I’m not sure there is anymore.
Memory Loss Changes the Joe Joyce Boxing Future Conversation
This is the part I can’t get past.
Joyce returned to his hotel and couldn’t properly remember what had happened.
He apparently believed he had been doing well before watching the fight back.
Again, I’m not diagnosing him.
Memory loss can have different causes and circumstances, and those questions belong with qualified medical professionals.
But from the perspective of somebody who cares about boxing and has watched Joe Joyce throughout his career, I find it incredibly difficult to hear that and then move immediately onto potential opponents.
This shouldn’t become another matchmaking exercise.
Maybe Joyce could fight this bloke.
Perhaps he could have a rematch with that bloke.
Give him an easier opponent and see what he has left.
Why?
What exactly are we trying to discover?
Whether he can still win a professional boxing match?
Surely there are more important questions now.
We’ve Seen Memory Loss Become Part of the Boxing Conversation Before
I’ve written previously about Jin Sasaki and the deeply worrying issue of memory loss following boxing:
The individual circumstances are different and shouldn’t simply be lumped together.
But they raise the same uncomfortable reality.
Memory loss and boxing should never become something we casually accept.
We know boxing is dangerous.
Nobody needs another lecture about that.
Two people enter a ring and deliberately attempt to punch each other until one of them cannot continue or the judges decide who won.
Risk can never be completely removed from boxing without fundamentally changing what boxing is.
But accepting risk doesn’t mean ignoring warning signs.
There has to be a point where protecting somebody becomes more important than finding them another opponent.
For me, Joe Joyce has reached that point.
Boxing Is Terrible at Saying Enough Is Enough
The wider problem is that boxing rarely knows how to deal with the end of a fighter’s career.
I’ve written about that before:
Nobody wants to tell a fighter to stop.
Promoters don’t want to.
Trainers struggle to.
Fans don’t always want to.
And fighters themselves are probably the least likely people in the room to accept that it’s over.
That’s understandable.
Imagine dedicating your entire adult life to becoming a professional boxer.
Training becomes your routine.
Competition becomes your identity.
Then somebody effectively tells you that the thing you’ve spent decades doing is finished.
There is always another comeback available.
Another training camp.
Another opponent.
Another opportunity to prove everybody wrong.
Boxing loves comeback stories.
Rocky taught us that as well.
But again, real life isn’t a film.
Sometimes the bravest decision isn’t getting off the canvas one more time.
It’s deciding you don’t need to get knocked down again.
What Does Joe Joyce Actually Have Left to Prove?
This is another reason I struggle with the discussion surrounding the Joe Joyce boxing future.
What exactly does Joyce need from another fight?
He won an Olympic silver medal.
He became British, Commonwealth and European heavyweight champion.
He held the WBO interim heavyweight title.
He beat Daniel Dubois.
He stopped Joseph Parker.
At his peak, he was a legitimate threat to virtually anybody in heavyweight boxing.
Joe Joyce has already proved he belongs in British boxing history.
Another fight doesn’t improve that legacy.
Another win against a carefully selected opponent doesn’t suddenly make him 35 again.
And another defeat certainly isn’t required before we’re allowed to say he should retire.
Sometimes fighters seem to believe retirement means admitting defeat.
It doesn’t.
It means recognising that a career has reached its natural conclusion.
I’m Saying This Because I’m a Joe Joyce Fan
I don’t want this to read like I’m having a go at Joyce.
Quite the opposite.
I’m a fan.
I enjoyed watching The Juggernaut at his best.
There was something uniquely entertaining about watching opponents hit him with everything they had before slowly realising that this enormous bloke was still walking towards them.
Joe Joyce gave us some brilliant nights.
But being a fan of somebody shouldn’t mean wanting to watch them continue regardless of the consequences.
Sometimes being a fan means being perfectly happy never to see them fight again.
That’s where I am with Joyce.
I don’t need another comeback.
I don’t need to see whether his chin has one more fight left in it.
I don’t need another opponent to provide the answer.
Because Joyce’s own comments following his latest defeat have already told me enough.
The Joe Joyce Boxing Future Shouldn’t Include Another Fight
Joe Joyce spent much of his career looking like heavyweight boxing’s answer to Rocky Balboa.
Hit him and he kept coming.
Hit him harder and he kept coming.
Hit him again and somehow he was still there.
It was remarkable.
It was entertaining.
And it helped make him one of Britain’s leading heavyweights.
But Rocky is fiction.
The punches disappear when filming stops.
Real punches don’t.
Real fighters carry those nights with them long after the crowd has gone home.
At 40 years old, after five defeats in six fights and a stoppage loss he admits he couldn’t properly remember afterwards, I don’t want to hear about Joe Joyce’s next opponent.
I want to hear that he’s healthy.
I want to see him enjoying the career he built.
And I want boxing to recognise that sometimes there shouldn’t be another comeback.
For me, the Joe Joyce boxing future belongs outside the ropes.
He has nothing left to prove inside them.
What Do You Think?
Am I being too strong in saying Joe Joyce should never fight again, or did his admission about being unable to properly remember his latest defeat change the conversation for you as well?
Share your opinion in the comments and join the debate. If you enjoyed this piece, share it with another boxing fan and head over to CMBoxing for more independent boxing opinion, analysis and discussion from across the sport.