When Patsy Joyce talks about getting on that plane to Los Angeles in 2028, he’s not getting ahead of himself. Such has been his whirlwind rise in world boxing he’s already being touted as an Olympic medal contender, and justifiably so.
Joyce was the youngest member of the 17-strong Irish team at September’s World Boxing Championships in Liverpool, coming away with the bantamweight (55kg) bronze medal. At 19, he defied his youth – and his own expectations – and took out several boxers with far more weighty reputations.
“I was going out hoping to win one fight. I didn’t expect it,” says Joyce. “I was going for experience, for the 2028 Olympics, get as many fights as possible out there and see where it goes.
“I think it was better because there was no pressure on me. I was like, ‘do my best and win’. Now I know I’m able to compete at that level, up there with them all.”
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Several members of Joyce’s corner have already been telling him that – starting with his uncle John Joe Joyce, who competed in the light welterweight at the 2008 Olympics in Beijing and first took Joyce under his wing at the Olympic club in Mullingar.
Irish boxing head coach Zaur Antia also has Olympic ties going back to Beijing, and one of the last people to offer Joyce advice before he entered the ring in Liverpool was two-time Olympic champion Kellie Harrington.
“I’m chatting with Kellie the whole time,” he says. “Before my fights in Liverpool she came into the dressingroom, and she was saying ‘just enjoy it, don’t take it serious, just enjoy it’. It calmed me down.”
With Aoife O’Rourke securing middleweight gold (75kg) and Gráinne Walsh also winning a welterweight (65kg) bronze, Liverpool proved the best World Championships for Irish boxing since 2015, when Michael Conlan became Ireland’s first men’s champion.
There was another World Championship connection with Joyce in that his cousin, Joe Ward, was the last Irishman to win a world elite medal, coming away with silver in Hamburg in 2017.
Joyce turned 20 in October and will next compete at the European Under-23 Championships in Budapest at the end of this month, where another medal beckons. He’s already won a European under-22 title from last year.
There was no easy bout in Liverpool, Joyce taking out South Korea’s Jaeyong Shin, Bulgaria’s Olympian and European medallist Javier Ibanez Diaz and Asian champion Mirazizbek Mirzakhalilov of Uzbekistan before narrowly falling to Spain’s Rafael Serrano, a European bronze medallist, in the semi-finals.
“I’m only young, you get more mature,” says Joyce. “You get more man strength as well. You’re 23, 24, that’s when you’re peaking. More tournaments before that [LA 2028]. You get more experience. You get better and better. Every tournament you get better.”
Joyce admits he got a wake-up call when beaten in the opening round of the Strandja multi-nations tournament in Bulgaria earlier this year.
“I lost my first fight, got battered as well. I didn’t perform at all. But it was good, because then you know how good they [other top boxers] are, I needed that. You’re boxing the best of the best.”
Joyce took a short break after his Liverpool success but not for long, the prospect of further medal success in Budapest soon pulling him back into the ring.
“A lot of boxers seem to say that to us. You take the time off, and you get restless, and need to get going. You just get bored sitting around. You’re mad to do something.”
His says his uncle John Joe is still one of his boxing heroes and has helped shine the light towards making Los Angeles, 20 years after John Joe competed in Beijing.
“It makes you think you can do it. ‘My uncle did it, so why can’t I do it?’. You don’t have to be special to do it. It’s just a normal thing. You can get there, if you train hard and listen to your coaches.”
