Boxing
Joe Joyce stops Carlos Takam with sixth-round TKO, calls out Anthony Joshua and Oleksandr Usyk
Carlos Takam was finding a home with his overhand right nearly at will until Joe Joyce decided to demonstrate why he's called the "Juggernaut."
Joyce caught Takam with a left hook seconds into the sixth round and finished him with a barrage of punches moments later for a sixth-round TKO at The SSE Arena in Wembley, England on Saturday night.
"He hit me with some good shots, and I managed to work him out on where to land," said a victorious Joyce (13-0, 12 KOs). "He's still dangerous, so I had to take my opportunity when I saw it."
On how he was able to take Takam's overhand rights and respond with that huge and definitive sixth round, Joyce offered: "It's to do with technical skill and tactics and being able to ride shots, block shots, use my footwork ... is like the sweet science of boxing, so I used that to great effect."
With the victory, Joyce delivered a message toward unified world heavyweight champion Anthony Joshua and Oleksandr Usyk, who fight Sept. 25.
"What I want is AJ or Usyk," Joyce said without hesitation.
His promoter Frank Warren explained how that could happen.
"He's the mandatory challenger, he's No. 1 now, and obviously AJ and Usyk are going in September, and then he becomes the mandatory challenger to the winner," Warren said about Joyce.
Warren added, though, that it's likely that the Joshua-Usyk winner will face the victor of the Tyson Fury-Deontay Wilder trilogy, which is on Oct. 9, for undisputed glory before Joyce gets a world title crack.
Until then, Joyce can use film from Saturday night's win to keep improving. The heavyweight tilt had Takam stealing the first two rounds with late outputs behind those right hands. While Joyce asserted the jab with some more pop and authority in the third, Takam rebounded to arguably win the fourth.
The French-Cameroonian veteran fighter seemed to be getting tired in the fifth, and Joyce chose the perfect opportunity to pounce on him in the sixth as the left hook he surprised the warrior with paved the way for unanswered punches that halted the action seconds later.
Takam objected to the stoppage, even lightly shoving the ref in frustration, but it certainly looked like Joyce was on the verge of dropping him.
Here's how the whole Joyce-Takam main card went.
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