John Joyce scores big KO following a thump from Tony

Tony Davitt is normally the one taking punches on the pads, but the veteran manager and coach was dishing out a few shots of his own on Saturday night.

With Lucan welterweight John Joyce looking somewhat sloppy after two rounds of his fight with Tomasz Goluch, Davitt took matters into his own hands.

*THWACK*

“Tony gave me a smack, a full force smack, at the end of the second round and, I’m not going to lie, it woke me up,” laughed Joyce afterward when speaking to Irish-Boxing.com.

“I went out in the third round like he told me to do and I put him away. I needed that slap to wake me up!”

It was a lovely left hook to the liver from Joyce that dropped Goluch and saw the gasping Pole fail to make the ten count.

A fabulous finish, but the 31-year-old Dub wasn’t too happy with his performance and explained how “to be honest, I’ve been suffering from the flu for the past few weeks and that wasn’t my best performance, at all. I feel I could have done a lot better.”

“I know I controlled the fight but some of the shots I got caught with, I was saying to myself ‘I shouldn’t have got caught with that, I shouldn’t have got caught with that’.”

“I did the job, that’s the main thing. But, if I was at my best, which I don’t feel I was, that fight would’ve been over in the first round.”

The win was Joyce’s second in five weeks following an impressive points triumph over Hungarian yardstick Ferenc Jarko in Waterford last month.

Another solid win on his record – which reads 5-0 now 11 months on from his debut – Joyce is certainly one of the more established of the new pros.

A step-up in the Summer looks likely, but Joyce is leaving it all up to his manager – perhaps for fear of getting another dig!

“We’ll see what happens,” he stated.

“I think the last fight, against Ferenc Jarko, was the sort of ‘see where I’m at’ fight and I think I proved myself. The guy barely landed three shots on me.”

“Whatever Tony wants, I’ll do. It’s all up to Tony.”

Photo Credit: Ricardo Guglielminotti – The Fighting Irish (@ThefIrish)