The 37-year-old Brit suffered a sixth-round technical knockout against the Chinese heavyweight after his right eye completely closed up, with the ringside doctor twice inspecting the swelling before the referee waved off the contest.
Zhang landed some heavy blows early on in the bout, staggering his opponent, and then proceeded to target Joyce’s swollen eye in the rounds that followed.
While Joyce accepted the decision to halt the fight, his mother, Marvel Opara, was less pleased and quickly brought up her son’s win over Daniel Dubois back in November 2020.
Back then, Dubois was allowed to continue until the 10th round with a broken orbital socket and no vision in his left eye before finally taking a knee – though the decision not to stop the fight sooner was widely criticised.
During Joyce’s post-fight interview with talkSPORT, his mum interrupted and said: ‘How come Daniel Dubois can fight for 10 rounds and no-one looked at his eye?’
Joyce himself had no arguments with the decision, saying to his mother: ‘No, no, no, Mum, it’s alright.’
He continued: ‘It’s an eye for an eye again now, I got my eye done. It’s like what I did [focusing on the swollen eye], I got a bit of payback from Dubois I guess. Maybe it’s karma.
‘He just kept on getting my eye. I’m fine, I’m completely fine, but now it’s closed up and I can’t see out of it now.
‘I haven’t fought a southpaw for a long time, so I need to look over the tape.
‘I thought I could have carried on, I was taking his shots fine, but it’s just unfortunate that the eye closed up. But I’ll be back.’
On whether he will rematch Zhang next, Joyce added: ‘Yeah possibly. I’ll discuss with my team and see what my options are. It doesn’t look good taking the rematches recently, maybe I’ll take another one in the meantime or something.’
He continued: ‘Credit to him and his team for getting the win. When you take risks, sometimes it doesn’t go your way. So I’m disappointed.
‘But I’ll be back. It’s not the end of my journey. If I decide to rematch him next or whenever, I’ll be back anyway. I’ll review the loss and see where I can make improvements.
‘Just massively disappointed, I thought I’d get the win tonight. Sometimes it doesn’t go your way and that’s what happened.’
MORE : Joe Joyce suffers surprise stoppage defeat to Zhilei Zhang
MORE : ‘What more do I have to do?’ – Joe Joyce demands world title shot against Tyson Fury or Oleksandr Usyk if beats Zhilei Zhang
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