Joe Joyce vs Zhilei Zhang for the WBO Interim heavyweight title
The Juggernaut vs Big Bang
Chinese heavyweight contender Zhilei Zhang (24-1-1, 19KO) will challenge Joe Joyce (15-0, 14 KOs) for the unbeaten Londoner's WBO Interim championship April 15 at a venue to be announced in London.
Joyce-Zhilei will match huge heavyweights who both won Olympic silver medals – Zhilei at the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing and Joyce at the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro.
Zhilei – a 6-foot-6, 277-pound southpaw – is the WBO’s 12th-ranked contender in the heavyweight division.
Putney’s Joyce is the mandatory challenger for Oleksandr Usyk’s WBO belt, but the undefeated Ukrainian southpaw is expected to fight WBC king Tyson Fury next.
A bout between Usyk (20-0, 13 KOs), who owns the IBF, IBO, WBA and WBO titles, and England’s Fury (33-0-1, 24 KOs), the WBC champion, could determine the first fully unified heavyweight champion of boxing’s four-belt era.
Zhang is already a familiar name to British fight fans following his dramatic fight with Croatian Filip Hrgovic on the undercard of Oleksandr Usyk vs Anthony Joshua II. Despite doing enough in the eyes of many to get his hand raised that night, it was not to be for “Big Bang,” as Hrgovic was awarded a close unanimous decision victory.
The two are amongst the biggest punchers in the heavyweight division and are seldom known to take a backwards step, so fans in the capital this spring should not expect to hear the final bell.
More details for Joyce-Zhang will be released soon.
