Joe Joyce explained why he lost his first fight to Zhilei Zhang.
The British heavyweight lost to the 40-year-old Chinese southpaw in April in a surprise upset, but the manner of the defeat means Zhang is the favourite going into the rematch.
The pair fight on September 23, and Joyce looks to put the sixth-round stoppage behind him with an increase in weight, and an awareness that his standards were not sufficiently high in his preparation for the first clash.
“I’m feeling good. I’m focused, a bit heavier and good to go,” Joyce said to Carl Frampton, reported BoxingScene.com. “If I’d won the fight like that then no mistakes I’d made in the first camp would have been corrected. Going forward it’s given me a wake up call to get things right.’
Joyce struggled against the left-handed stance of his opponent, and now the 37-year-old thinks he has added enough to his game and his body.
He explained: “I’ve got everything right. I’ve been a lot more disciplined and focused and switched on,” he said. “Maybe I took my eye off the ball a little bit in the first fight and I’m just making sure I’ve ticked all the boxes and dotted all the i’s.
“It’s a bit more practice with the southpaw stance in terms of sparring and technique and tactics but also getting my body bigger and stronger and more ready for the job of fighting Zhang. Zhang surprised me with his speedy accuracy and power and I got the tactics wrong on the night. There were a lot of things to nitpick that have been handled in this camp.”