Joe Joyce has responded to rumours that Anthony Joshua has leaked unfavourable sparring footage which shows AJ getting the better of The Juggernaut.
Joyce had previously come out and made suggestions that the footage was edited to make Joshua look good and that they were drilling certain techniques during the session. But, in a recent interview on the matter, he ridiculed his former Team GB stablemate telling iFL that “he hasn’t looked that good for a while”.
“It was a very biased sparring video of him looking good,” said Joyce.
“He hasn’t looked that good for a while. There’s a lot of footage over the years – four or five years plus of sparring footage. There’s him leading up to the Olympics, there’s post-Olympics when he’s turned pro and I’m leading up to my Olympics in Rio and depending on what stage of the camp we’re in, sometimes I’m punching him up, sometimes he’s punching me up but it’s equal sparring, 50-50 sparring, people would pay to watch.”
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The pair went back and forth on Twitter a few months ago after Joyce offered to fight Joshua while Oleksandr Usyk was defending Ukraine against Russian invasions. But AJ shut down the offer referencing his first-round stoppage of Joyce in the amateurs.
He tweeted: “I boxed joe and stopped him in 1 round. I’d do the same thing today! Ain’t nothing changed.”
To which Joyce responded: “And @anthonyjoshua you having a meltdown, where’s all your belts? All those sponsorships and endorsements helping? You’re a glass cannon, quit the act, you were given everything.”
Not long after this online altercation did the forty-second sparring montage emerge, leading some to believe Joshua had leaked the footage. When asked during the same interview whether he thought AJ had released the video, Joyce responded: “Someone has handpicked sparring. Mentally where Joshua’s at, he’s being a bit petty if he did have anything to do with it, to leak sparring footage like that where it’s like that and bringing up that fight ten years ago when he beat me in a round when the odds were stacked against me but I’ve come a long way since then.
“I think he just likes being the big man, the landlord, and that. Where I’m getting up and there and being a threat to him, It’s like ego.”
Joyce is set to face Romanian gatekeeper Christian Hammer on July 2 as part of Queensberry Promotion’s Jason Cunningham vs. Zolani Tete show at Wembley Arena, London. While Joshua has triggered his rematch clause to face Usyk again after losing to the Ukrainian in September. The bout is expected to take place on August 20 at the Jeddah Superdome in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia.