Zhilei Zhang proved he’s an elite heavyweight. Joe Joyce might be finished.
Zhang knocked out Joyce with a single right hook in the final seconds of the third round of their rematch on Saturday night at OVO Arena Wembley in London.
The Chinese fighter had defeated his British counterpart by a technical knockout in April.
Joyce couldn’t avoid his southpaw opponent’s left hand in the first fight, which closed his right eye and left the referee no choice but to stop the fight in the sixth round.
NOT A FLUKE.
Big Bang Zhang ends the rivalry with a highlight reel KO 🤯🇨🇳 pic.twitter.com/kArwVgWzoR
— Top Rank Boxing (@trboxing) September 23, 2023
He was somehwhat better prepared to deal with Zhang’s signature punch Saturday, keeping his right hand up and moving to the left, away from Zhang’s power.
One problem for Joyce was that he was too tentative. He did almost nothing offensively, which gave the more-confident Zhang no reason to take a backward step.
Zhang connected on a few good lefts early in Round 2 and then unloaded a series of hard, accurate shots late in the round, which gave viewers a taste of what was to come.
Moments before the bell to end Round 3, Zhang threw a left to the body. Joyce responding by initiating a right hand but he ran into a perfect right hook before he could unload it, which sent him crashing to the canvas.
Joyce moved from flat on his stomach, to all fours, to one knee and finally to his feet. However, referee Steve Gray, looking directly into Joyce’s eyes, didn’t like what he saw and stopped the fight then and there.
Just like that, Zhang (26-1, 21 KOs) had back-to-back knockouts over a top contender.
“I feel very happy,” he said immediately afterward through a translator. “Like I said before the fight, it’s gonna end sooner than the first fight. I did it!”
Zhang was defending the WBO’s “interim” title, which is meaningless other than the fact he’s first in line to challenge titleholder Oleksandr Usyk.
However, when he was asked who he would like to fight next, he didn’t mention the unified champion from Ukraine.
“I want to ask the audience,” he said, referring to the crowd at OVO Arena. “I want to ask a question: Do you want to see me shut up [WBC beltholder] Tyson Fury?”
Zhang will have to wait to see what the future holds but it’s clear that the 40-year-old has become a major player in the sport’s glamour division.
Joyce? How does he recover from this?
He had a chance to get things right after the first fight. Instead, he suffered a worse fate, a one-punch knockout that probably will knock him out of the rankings and further erode his reputation.
The silver medalist in the 2016 Olympics might never fight for a major title, let alone win one.
