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Joe Joyce (16-3, 15 KOs) faces Filip Hrgovic (17-1, 14 KOs) over 10 heavyweight rounds on Saturday, April 5, at the Co-op Arena, Live in Manchester on a Queensberry Promotions show on DAZN.
Both boxers are former no.1 contenders, who have each lost their last fights and in need of reigniting their careers with a credible win.
32 from Croatia, ‘El Animal’ Hrgovic was the former IBF #1 until his last fight, when he was beaten for the first time by Daniel Dubois, an opponent Joe Joyce has already beaten himself.
The 6’ 6” heavyweight was in control of the championship contest until Dubois piled on the pressure in the mid rounds to close the gap and cause cuts above both eyes of Hrgovic, who was then stopped in round eight on advice of the ringside doctor.
From the opening bell, Hrgovic began by teeing off on Dubois, landing copious one-twos straight down the middle. His backhand right just couldn’t miss. The man from Zagreb was confidently leaving his left hand dropped down low, despite the threat of the powerful jab coming back from Dubois.
He was very effective when using his attributes, such as his long reach and rangy straight shots. Hrgovic took some of Dubois biggest punches and still stayed standing. Even just the jab alone would have been enough to wobble other heavyweights, but Hrgovic absorbed them all, but did look stunned by the power at times. He even took some of the Brit’s biggest hooks, the same ones that dropped Anthony Joshua several times.
Hrgovic did appear to tire quite early in the fight, which could be down to either the pace he was forced to fight at, the big shots he took, or the hindering cuts he sustained early. Or, his energy may have even been sapped by the amount of huge right hands he landed that didn’t manage to put a dent in his rival.
But he also tired in the Zhilei Zhang and Demsey McKean fights too, so it appears that he just doesn’t possess a big engine, like Joyce does. However, he was able to go all the way to 12th round with both, so he can endure even when depleted.
Now 39, Joyce has lost three from his last four fights. The puncher from Putney was thriving, with four consecutive KOs over Daniel Dubois, Carlos Takam, Christian Hammer, and Joseph Parker between 2020-2022, and earning a WBO #1 ranking and mandatory challenger status to the word title.
However, it all came crashing down when he lost back-to-back bouts with Chinese powerhouse Zhilei Zhang in 2023. He not only lost his WBO Interim world heavyweight title, but his invincibility was also shattered to pieces.
Notably, Hrgovic was able to decision Zhang in 2023, although ‘Big Bang’ was suffering from dehydration in the Florida heat.
‘The Juggernaut’ was named so for his ability to walk through anything that anyone threw at him, but now he doesn’t possess that superpower anymore.
Punches used to just bounce off Joyce, but he has since been knocked out twice and dropped in his last fight. However, he still has unwavering faith that he will become a world champion, but the prospect of that happening is becoming progressively lower with each passing fight.
Not only do these rivals share opponents – Hrgovic beat Zhang, but Zhang beat Joyce; and Joyce beat Dubois when Hrgovic was stopped by him – but they have also fought against each other once before, in 2013, in the World Series Boxing.
Back then, as an amateur, Joyce actually moved his head, which he certainly doesn’t do anymore. That five-round fight was a close contest, narrowly scored to Joyce on a split decision.
The takeaways from that fight were that the pair are very closely-matched, they both took the best of what each other had to offer and didn’t go down, and that Joyce’s workrate was the deciding factor on the scorecards.
So, will it be repeat or revenge this Saturday night? Let’s find out.
If Hrgovic is able to keep the distance between them and regularly land that big backhand right, then he should be able to win most of the rounds, especially the early ones, whilst also gradually wearing down his durable opponent.
However, as the fight goes on, the aggressive, advancing Joyce will become increasingly more dangerous and imposing. The pace that the Londoner sets is relentless and the Croatian has been known to tire in the second half of his fights.
Hrgovic is currently the bookies favourite to win, but that’s not a foregone conclusion, in my mind. I believe the Croatian will be ahead in the opening stages of the fight, but Joyce will get stronger with every passing round.
Hrgovic was able to land his signature right cross on Joyce 12 years ago and he will only be even more successful now as Joyce’s head is a still target at all times.
In those early rounds, that swift, accurate backhand of Hrgovic should rack up the rounds in his favour, and the shorter 10-round distance will work in his favour. If it was over 12-rounds, then Joyce would be favoured due to his lasting stamina.
Although there’s a strong case for Joyce setting an uncomfortable pace and overwhelming Hrgovic, I think that the Croatian to win on points just very narrowly outweighs that chance, in my opinion. Despite the odds, I found this fight incredibly difficult to call.
Prediction: Hrgovic to win on points.
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Tim Rickson is the WhichBookie boxing analyst who joined the team midway through 2022 and will be providing boxing betting tips throughout the year for all of the big fights.
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If you’d like to back any of the selections, we recommend a bookmaker to do so with. These are usually the bookies offering the best odds on the selection at the time of posting the tip but it may be worth checking other bookies in case the odds have changed. There may also be betting offers associated with the tip that are only available with specific bookmakers that are worth taking into consideration.
We never recommend an actual stake to use for each bet as this will vary between people depending on the size of their betting bank. Never bet more than you can afford to lose and always stick to your staking plan.
WhichBookie boxing analyst Tim Rickson will publish tips whenever he finds value in a bet. If there is a big fight coming up, it’s likely that he will cover it but generally, they’ll be posted whenever a good bet comes about.
Many of the big boxing matches are only available via Pay Per View. However, you may be able to find streams of some of the less-popular fights via the Bet365 Live Streaming service. Bet365 provides over 100,000 live streams of sporting events every year and is regarded as one of the best services for streaming sports online without charge.
There are several options when it comes to betting on boxing, and the more you know, the better your chances of success. We will now go into more detail about some of the different betting markets that you will find, and discuss a few potential strategies you could use.
As with most sports, the outright market is probably the simplest, because you’re just betting on who will win the fight. There are no other criteria to consider, other than the fact that with many of the best bookies for boxing, you can also bet on the draw. However, draws in boxing are very rare and not many people tend to back this outcome.
Bear in mind that in many fights, one boxer tends to be a heavy favourite and it’s usually quite easy to pick the winner. There don’t tend to be that many shock results. Therefore, the odds on the favourite are often very low, even if you use the bookie with the best odds as described earlier in the article.
If you’re happy betting at short odds, you can certainly get a good success rate simply by backing short price favourites in boxing. But many people prefer to look for bigger wins. So you may sometimes need to look at some of the other markets to get a better return on your bet.
This market lets you choose not only who will win the fight, but how they will win. Different methods of victory are usually grouped as follows:
So because there are more possible outcomes in this market, the odds are higher than just the outright win market.
The Round Betting market offers the opportunity to get the highest odds. Here you can bet on which fighter will win, and which round he/she will win in.
Options to bet on a fighter to win on points, or to bet on the draw, are both also included in this market. In a 12 round bout, that gives 27 different possible outcomes. Therefore, the odds on each one are naturally going to be much higher. Think of it as the equivalent of the correct score market in football betting.
So the round betting market offers the biggest potential wins when betting on boxing. But of course, it’s harder to predict the outcome. You do have the option to split your stake to cover more than one outcome though. So if you felt that a fighter would win within the first 3 rounds, you could split your stake to back him to win in round 1, round 2 and round 3. The odds would mean you’d get a good profit if any of those outcomes happened.
This is a simple market in which you decide whether the fight will last all 12 rounds or not. Therefore there are only two outcomes to bet on, Yes or No.
It’s possible to get a decent success rate when betting on this market. Check the stats and the history of each boxer and ask yourself the following:
The answers to these key questions should give you a good idea of whether the fight is likely to go the distance or not. There can still be surprises, but you’ll certainly win more bets than you lose.
This market allows you to bet on the total number of rounds the fight will last for. The advantage here is that you do not need to specify who will win, just how long it will last.
For example, let’s consider a market of Over/Under 3.5 Rounds. There are only two options to bet on, either Over 3.5 Rounds or Under 3.5 Rounds. Therefore, you would approach the market as follows:
You will find that similar markets are available for Over/under 4.5, Over/Under 5.5, Over/Under 6.5 etc.
As any professional punter will tell you, the key to making a profit is not knowing who will win every time. Because obviously, that is not possible. The real trick is making sure that when you do win, you get the best possible odds on your bet.
We studied the odds for outright bets on every professional boxing match over a period of three months. We wanted to find the best bookies for boxing odds over a prolonged period of time.
As you would expect, Betfair and Bet365 are better than most of the competition. But the results showed that Betfred have the highest odds overall and came out well in some of the other markets like round betting.
Betfred were consistently best or equal best odds on nearly every outright market we recorded. They blew some of the other online bookies away in terms of the value they offered on boxing, and their user ratings are good too. So if you don’t have an account with them yet, we would definitely recommend joining.
| Best Bookies For Boxing | ||
|---|---|---|
 | Betfred | Visit |
 | Bet365 | Visit |
 | Betfair | Visit |
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