{"id":671702,"date":"2026-07-03T13:26:08","date_gmt":"2026-07-03T13:26:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/671702\/"},"modified":"2026-07-03T13:26:08","modified_gmt":"2026-07-03T13:26:08","slug":"joe-joyce-named-as-frontrunner-to-land-shock-world-heavyweight-title-shot","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/671702\/","title":{"rendered":"Joe Joyce named as frontrunner to land shock world heavyweight title shot"},"content":{"rendered":"

Joe Joyce<\/a> could land himself an unexpected world title shot, having been named as the frontrunner to face a heavyweight KO specialist.<\/p>\n

The 40-year-old has not fought since his 10-round unanimous decision defeat to Filip Hrgovic<\/a>, who stepped in as a late replacement for Dillian Whyte in April 2025.<\/p>\n

Prior to that, Joyce lost another unanimous decision in July 2024, this time against fellow veteran Derek Chisora<\/a>, which caused many to speculate about the Olympic silver medallist\u2019s future in the sport.<\/p>\n

His back-to-back stoppage defeats to Zhilei Zhang in 2023 offered the first impression that, at this stage in his career, Joyce is no longer the \u2018Juggernaut\u2019 of old.<\/p>\n

Yet despite losing four of his last five fights, the Londoner is scheduled to face unbeaten Russian Artem Suslenkov<\/a> at the VTB Arena, Moscow, on July 11.<\/p>\n

This was supposed to feature on the undercard of Murat Gassiev vs Tony Yoka, only for the main event to be scuppered after Yoka pulled out with a back injury.<\/p>\n

Gassiev, however, is now searching for a new opponent to defend his world title against, having been elevated from \u2018regular\u2019 to full WBA champion following Oleksandr Usyk\u2019s decision to relinquish his three belts<\/a>.<\/p>\n

According to The Ring<\/a>, Joyce is currently the frontrunner to take on such a challenge.<\/p>\n

\u201cTony Yoka is now out of his WBA heavyweight title clash against Murat Gassiev due to a back injury.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Ring has learned that alternative opponents are being lined up for Gassiev\u2019s return later this month, with Joe Joyce as the most likely option.\u201d<\/p>\n

Gassiev, who is now a two-division world champion, has not fought since his sixth-round finish over a 44-year-old Kubrat Pulev last December.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Joe Joyce could land himself an unexpected world title shot, having been named as the frontrunner to face…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":671703,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[41],"tags":[2560,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-671702","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-boxing","tag-boxing","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/671702","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=671702"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/671702\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/671703"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=671702"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=671702"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=671702"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}