Before Joe Joyce fought for maybe the last time as a pro, he was made to wait in the changing room as Jarrell Miller, a serial drugs cheat, engaged in a needlessly prolonged staredown with Fabio Wardley, his opponent for a fight on June 7. Behind Wardley, meanwhile, standing in the Ipswich man’s corner, was Dillian Whyte, the heavyweight Joyce was supposed to be fighting in Manchester last night; someone who has, like Miller, failed more than one performance-enhancing drugs test in his career. 

Whyte, of course, injured himself during training and was in Manchester on Saturday only to support Wardley, whom he manages, and then watch the main event between Joyce and Filip Hrgovic (who replaced Whyte on a few weeks’ notice). He knew that either Joyce or Hrgovic could still feature in his future plans – despite his recent injury, and despite his checkered history – and therefore wanted to see which of the two got back on track and which one returned to square one. 

That it was Hrgovic and not Joyce who revived his career will have come as no surprise. Seven years Joyce’s junior, the Croatian was clearly the fresher of the two heavyweights going in, and he had also lost only once, via cuts stoppage to Daniel Dubois in June. Joyce, on the other hand, turns 40 this year and had lost three of his last four, two of them by stoppage, one by knockout. 

Even so, with Miller at ringside, and Whyte there as well, it is hard to ignore the gross unfairness of it all. Joyce, after all, wasn’t long ago beating the likes of Dubois and Joseph Parker and seemingly then on the verge of challenging for the world heavyweight title. Now, just two and a half years later, he is staring retirement in the face and inhabiting that danger zone, where winning and losing essentially mean the same thing. Lose, as Joyce did last night, and a fighter starts running out of options and avenues to explore. Win, however, and the future seems just as bleak, if only because he will then be encouraged to carry on, keep taking punches, and continue getting matched with opponents perhaps out of his league. 

It is unfair, yes, but it is also cruel. It is cruel what has happened to Joyce in such a short period of time and it is cruel to see him fight the way he did last night and come away thinking he did what he has been programmed to do, and has always done, yet has nothing to show for it. What that means, in a nutshell, is that Joyce is at the stage now where “juggernauting” – that is, taking two shots to give one – is no longer even yielding the results to help conceal its inherent risk and danger, as it once did. These days his opponents wait for that second wind, certain it will come, and they refuse to fold like they would have done in the good old days. These days they land shots with conviction, having seen Joyce can be knocked out, and they don’t just prod and throw keep-away shots to create an escape or a distraction. These days they fight to win, not just to survive. 

Added to this, too, is the fact that Joyce is naturally only getting slower and easier to hit with each fight. Last night, for example, there were countless Hrgovic right hands bouncing off his head, many of which would have knocked out men with thinner skulls, and these shots, such is their frequency, hardly now register with Joyce. That, a few years ago, would have been cause for celebration and a sign Joyce was simply tougher than all the rest. But now, like smoking, it is not so cool. In fact, it is rather concerning, with the idea of punches “hardly registering” meaning something entirely different in 2025. If in the past Joyce would walk through them with a determination to land some of his own, now he walks through them with a numbness, almost as though he hasn’t realised the shot has landed until he sees his opponent pull back his arm and follow the first shot with a second.

Whether a reaction issue, or something else, this was noticeable against Hrgovic from as early as round one. Also noticeable in that opening round was the confidence Hrgovic had to stand and exchange with Joyce and his eagerness to make an early dent in the Londoner so as to minimise the possibility of him coming on late. Throwing mostly right hands, it didn’t take Hrgovic long to measure Joyce and find his range, and after that there was no stopping him. Again and again the right hand was thrown and more often than not it landed, regardless of where it was aimed or where Joyce, its target, was at the time positioned. 

Joyce, for his part, didn’t really get going until round three. Up to that point it had been a messy affair – in truth, this never changed – but after the third he managed to get on the front foot, fight with some urgency, and return, for better or worse, to the Joyce of old. This meant wading forward with his head down and effectively trying to overwhelm his opponent with punches in the hope they would then gas out and surrender. It has, in the past, been Joyce’s go-to mode of attack, yet he has had far less success with it in recent years, sadly. Against Hrgovic, too, there was never any sense that the Croatian would exhaust himself, either by punching Joyce or evading his attacks, to the extent that he wouldn’t be able to make it to the end of the 10 rounds. At worst, there was a possibility that Hrgovic may punch himself out and lose rounds due to a dip in work rate, but that, along with a cut by his left eyebrow, was Hrgovic’s only concern last night. 

By round six, in fact, he was again in control and capitalising on Joyce’s output dropping ever so slightly. Still on the back foot, Hrgovic now started to feel comfortable and was content to stay there if it led to Joyce coming forward and opening up. From there, even in corners, Hrgovic was able to draw Joyce in and then explode – well, relatively speaking – with right-hand counters, most of which landed where he intended them to land. None of them hurt Joyce, no, but that wasn’t really the point. They landed on him, they made him give ground, and they offered the three ringside judges evidence of the kind of clean action Joyce, for all his huffing and puffing, could not match. 

It was this difference in quality which cost Joyce in the end, for his work rate, though considerable, was rightly interpreted as little more than a tough man throwing his hands until he was told to stop. Often these punches were not even punches, more like prods, and not once was Hrgovic hurt, moved, or alarmed by any of them. Instead, he wanted Joyce to punch because it created openings for him to land punches of his own. The wilder he became, the easier he was to find. The tougher he felt, the easier it would be to soften him up. 

Yet, for all the shots he landed, a Hrgovic stoppage win was never likely. More important, for him, was that he finished the fight strong, and this he did, rather impressively. Indeed, despite fading in previous fights – notably against Zhilei Zhang and Daniel Dubois – Hrgovic this time peaked at the right moment, banking at least two of the last three rounds and appearing by far the fresher fighter down the stretch. It came as no shock, therefore, when he received a unanimous decision at the bout’s conclusion. (Scores: 98-92, 97-93, and 96-95.) 

“I came and took this fight on short notice and I wasn’t quite ready,” Hrgovic, now 18-1 (14), admitted afterwards. “Thanks to Joe for this opportunity. He took a strong fight on short notice.

“Look, this guy beat Dubois, and I beat him. So I want a rematch with Daniel Dubois. I did very bad in my last fight – congratulations to him, he did an amazing job last year – but of course I would like a rematch one day.”

As is true of most Joyce opponents, Hrgovic was only capable of understanding Joyce’s toughness once sharing a ring with him. He said, in tribute, “This guy is like steel. I couldn’t believe he took my shots. He’s a really strong guy. He’s a beast.”

Ordinarily those words – like “steel”, “strong”, and “beast” – would be worn like military medals by a heavyweight boxer and would give future opponents reason to approach with caution. However, now, given all we have seen, they act as the kind of encouragement Joe Joyce probably doesn’t need in 2025. They sound less like compliments and more like words plucked from the first draft of his epitaph. 

“He did really well,” said Joyce of Hrgovic. “It’s 1-1 [Joyce beat Hrgovic in the amateurs]. It wasn’t my time this time, but we can do it again.”

Like his punches, this comment felt automatic rather than thought out. It was, on the face of it, just something to say; something Joyce believed needed to be said at that moment. But then again, who really knows? Asked directly if he would continue fighting, he went on to say, “Yeah. Are you not entertained? It was a good fight. It was tough. He’s a great fighter; he’s been doing it a long time.”

Joyce, 16-4 (15), was left alone after that, perhaps wisely. He had, after all, just engaged in a tough 10-rounder during which punches, a lot of them, had bounced off his head. Chances are it would have been hard for him to make sense of what had happened even if he had managed to find the right words for it. 

A safer bet, in terms of clarity, was his promoter, Frank Warren, who sat ringside in a suit and took not a single punch all night. “He’s got to go and have a real serious think about the future, which he will do,” Warren said in the ring. “There’s no rush. Then we’ll all have a chat and see where we go from there. I’ve got to be honest, I think it was a really close fight. I’m not complaining about the decision, I’m just saying I thought it was a much closer fight [than the scores suggested]. He’s been a great servant for British boxing and is as tough as old boots. He’s done us proud. Let him go and have a think about it now. This heavyweight division is so lively and it’s never over for anybody.”

And there it is: the promoter’s great tease; the tease of opportunity; the tease of the comeback; the tease of a ninth life. Only the cruellest thing of all is that while, yes, comebacks do happen, they are seldom the kind of comebacks you want to see happen. They are not the ones you see in the Rocky films, in other words, and they do not involve good men at last having their day in the sun. 

Instead, drug cheats, they can come back. We let them come back. We in fact welcome them back and occasionally reward them for coming back. If in doubt, remember that there were two of them sitting ringside as Joe Joyce’s career sank in Manchester last night and both leapfrogged him without even putting on their gloves. One will be fighting Fabio Wardley at a football stadium in June, while the other will now forget all about Joyce, the man he let down, and presumably fight someone else next. For them, the comebacks continue. For them, everything is forgotten. 

But what never comes back are reflexes, speed, and the ability to absorb punishment. They all go, often without warning, and they tend to leave tough men not only vulnerable but in danger of trying to make a living off of toughness alone. Do that for long enough and for them, too, everything is soon forgotten.