Joe Joyce lost his comeback fight against Artem Suslenkov in a bizarre finish

Joe Joyce’s comeback fight ended in bizarre fashion as the veteran British heavyweight lost to Artem Suslenkov in Moscow.

The 40-year-old faces unbeaten Russian Suslenkov in his first fight since losing to Filip Horgevich in April 2025.

But after looking sluggish and lacking energy throughout, Joyce appeared to indicate he no longer wanted to fight in the 11th round and withdrew.

Joyce offered little defense as Suslenkov, 30, landed a few more blows before the referee stopped the fight.

Joyce, a silver medalist at the 2016 Olympics, now has a professional record of 16 wins and five losses, all of which have come in his last six fights.

The highlight of Joyce’s professional career came in 2022, when he defeated Joseph Parker to win the vacant WBO interim heavyweight title.

Joyce then faced Zhilei Zhang twice in 2023, but lost her unbeaten record in the first meeting and was stopped in the rematch.

After losing to Horgavic, Joyce’s promoter Frank Warren said his man needed to have “really serious thoughts about the future”.

Although Joyce said he spent 12 months trying to fight again and he was “Excited for the chance” to face Suslenkov. Who has improved his record to 15-0, some now fear that this could be the end of his boxing career.

Anthony Fowler, Great Britain’s teammate at Rio 2016, said at X: “What a sad end to Joe’s career. Shame to see him go out like this.”

Joyce’s fight was on the undercard of Russian Murat Gassiev’s first defense of his WBA heavyweight title.

Gassiev, who later became the WBA champion Alexander Usyk has vacated all three of his heavyweight belts Last month, Tony Yoka was scheduled to face off.

Joyce was considered a possible stand-in after the Frenchman went down with injury, but Peter Kadiru was confirmed last week and Gusev stopped the German in the sixth round to improve to 34 wins and two losses.