In addition to being an unbeaten heavyweight contender, Joe Joyce (12-0, 11 KOs) is also an artist. This is a painting he made commemorating his knockout win over current WBA interim champion Danial Dubois last November.
“It was a turning point for me, where I went from an underdog to pretty much a fully fledged prospect,” explained the 35-year-old, who returns to the ring against Carlos Takam at the SSE Arena, Wembley on Saturday night. “It was a fight where everyone thought I was going to lose and even get knocked out in the first few rounds.
“I proved a lot of people wrong and won a lot of people money for Christmas. It was less pressure and the heat was on Dubois. I’ve been in a lot bigger fights, the Olympics for instance, with a lot of people watching me, so I am used to the pressure. I just get on with it and perform on the night.
“The painting definitely reflects my moment, but I don’t know if it is quite finished yet. I look at it and think I could do more detail, but then I might lose some of the freshness of it. Maybe I have captured it,” he wondered, before telling the process of how he went about capturing the defining point of the fight.
“I just printed off an image, but I didn’t have a particularly good picture because it was from a clip of the fight and it was a bit pixelated so I couldn’t get all the detail I wanted. It does get to the point when you can overdo a painting and it is quite good to know when to stop, otherwise you can ruin the essence of what you are trying to paint.
“I can push my work to being almost photo realistic by painstakingly painting, but it just takes so long and you can get bored of painting the same thing. More recently I have preferred to work it all out in one sitting.
“You don’t want it to be too perfect or you might as well just blow up a photograph.”
This isn’t Joyce’s first venture into personal portraits and it almost certainly won’t be his last.
“The last time I did a self-portrait was my first year of university and I had some massive canvas that one of the students in the third year helped me make. It ended up being so big that it was wider than my outstretched arms and almost as tall as me.
“I will do one for the world title, for sure.
“The thing is, with boxing and painting, it takes time and you have to work at your skills.”
I bet if he puts the painting up for auction on eBay it will bring in some money. Everyone gets excited about famous people’s memorabilia especially if one is a collector. I got lucky and managed to collect a few autographed pictures from Muhammed Ali in the 1990s. A close friend of mine was managing a business raising charity monies for a sports memorabilia auction. Luckily, at the event, Ali was there live and he had him sign a few photographs along with a picture holding them. Great keepsakes!
I would definitely bid on it
He will be painting himself with world title belt in the future.
The bloke seems to have a sense of humor as well. Although Dubois won’t be laughing. Joyce a man of many talents.
Very Impressive…
That’s an awesome hobby/skill to have. Good for you Joe!
I know this will create a lot of jealousy on this forum, but I have Trevor Berbick’s autograph.
I have videos of me sparring with Trevor Berbick. He cursed me out constantly and I hurt him a few times.
Berbick was stopped only twice in a pretty long career, so he had a somewhat reliable chin. Probably not the easiest guy to hurt. Berbick and Pinklon Thomas were both in attendance at the Donald Stokes-Jose Rivera fight at the Dania Jai Alai center in the early 90s. I
never really cared about getting anybody’s autograph, but somebody I was with got Pinklon’s autograph, handed me a post-it note and told me to get Berbick’s. Not sure it added any value to the post-it note, but I got it. Manny Stewart was there that night, training Stokes I believe, and so was Ferdie Pacheco, calling the fight for Univision (I think). Some pretty big names there for a not so big fight card. Harold “Hackie” Reitman was on that card as well. The dude was an orthopedic surgeon who also boxed. He used to get some attention in the local media at the time due to the unusual background for a boxer.
Nice, I have the ‘steel pipe’
It is a bad painting!
Show us your fine art skills
Wow he’s skilled !
Very clever headline! It’s always interesting when people’s hidden talents are revealed, especially when they aren’t what you’d expect. Hope he doesn’t go Hunter Biden and try to sell it for $500,000
Agreed on the headline. Enjoy these types of articles
Roy Jones Jr. and myself in a pic, very happy to have that.