Joe Joyce was five pounds heavier Friday for his fight against Carlos Takam than he was the day before he defeated Daniel Dubois.
The 6-feet-6 Joyce stepped on the British Boxing Board of Control’s scale at 263¾ pounds for their 12-round main event Saturday night at Wembley Arena in London. The 2016 Olympic silver medalist officially weighed 258¾ pounds for his stoppage of Dubois nearly eight months ago.
The 6-feet-1 Takam came in at 248½ pounds.
London’s Joyce (12-0, 11 KOs) must defeat France’s Takam (39-5-1, 28 KOs) to assume the WBO’s number one spot in its heavyweight rankings following the mandated match between England’s Anthony Joshua (24-1, 22 KOs) and Ukraine’s Oleksandr Usyk (18-0, 13 KOs) on September 25 at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium in London. Usyk has been the WBO’s mandatory challenger in the heavyweight division since June 2019.
Joyce is ranked number two by the WBO, but he will move up to the top spot Usyk occupies if he beats Takam.
Joyce, 35, will fight for the first time since he produced the most significant win of his career – a 10th-round knockout of London’s Dubois (16-1, 15 KOs) on November 28 at Church House in London. Joyce’s jab badly damaged the area around the previously undefeated Dubois’ left eye, made him take a knee during the 10th round and prevented the highly touted, favored Dubois from continuing.
Takam, 40, has won four straight fights since losing back-to-back bouts by technical knockout to Joshua, the IBF/IBO/WBA/WBO champ, and Dereck Chisora (32-11, 23 KOs) in October 2017 and July 2018, respectively.
The 2004 Olympian will end a one-year layoff when he faces Joyce. Takam most recently fought last July 9, when defeated Jerry Forrest (26-4-1, 20 KOs) by unanimous decision in a 10-round main event ESPN televised from MGM Grand Conference Center in Las Vegas.
Joyce-Takam will headline a BT Sport 1 telecast in the United Kingdom and Ireland and a fite.tv pay-per-view show elsewhere ($12.99 in the United States). Their ring walks are expected to start at some point between 10:30 and 10:45 p.m. BST in the UK and Ireland, and 5:30 and 5:45 p.m. in the U.S.
–boxingscene.com
