Tyson Fury and his 'Mad angles' - Joe Joyce recalls a tough fortnight's sparring in 2018

With unbeaten heavyweight contender Joe Joyce pondering his next move given his highly anticipated match with young gun Daniel Dubois has been postponed, he found some time to relay to Seconds Out how impressed he was when sparring WBC heavyweight king Tyson Fury back in 2018.

"It was in Big Bear, he was getting ready for the [first] Wilder fight and I was getting ready for Bermane] Stiverne," Joyce recalled but, having checked this, Joe was actually preparing for Joe Hanks on the same show as Wilder vs Fury 1. "He was looking good, getting fit, trying to survive up there with nothing to do; he was in ’quarantine’ in Big Bear. He was there for two weeks, we sparred for two weeks before he went down to LA. I think he was struggling a little bit with the altitude and the boredom; there’s nothing to do there.
"I did loads of rounds with him. He is a very good boxer. He can have his hands low and he can slip a ,load of punches and he’s very quick. He throws his jab like a ’flicker’ jab so if it hits you in the eye, it will hit you in your eyeball before you got the chance to blink. He came with some mad angles, sometimes I was like, ’Where the hell are these punches coming from? Is there another guy in the room?!’

Joyce had worked with a significantly overweight Fury earlier in his career, as he explains in the full interview you can watch below, and obviously spent a great deal of time as a GB team-mate of unified heavyweight king Anthony Joshua. Joe found it difficult to separate the two at the top of the division, but eventually overdelivered, giving us a top four.

"I’m edging with Fury," Joyce stated. "He hasn’t been beat yet and he took all the belts off [Wladimir] Klitschko and won the WBC as well. But Joshua’s still there, he’s got his belts back. I’ll go Fury, Joshua, Deontay Wilder, Dillian Whyte."