Boxing’s strange landscape may reunite two Olympic rivals – but a delicious prospect stands in the way

In Rio, at the 2016 Olympics, Joe Joyce lost a controversial decision in the super-heavyweight final. The decision was just one of a dozen bad calls in a boxing tournament that was investigated and led directly to the sport not being part of the agenda for the Los Angeles Games in 2028. The Joyce final was on the damning list of rotten fights.

In Rio, Joyce was the No 3 seed and had to win three times to reach the final and a showdown with the Frenchman and No 1 seed, Tony Yoka. The draw was heavy: Joyce had to beat the Uzbek Bakhodir Jalolov and Ivan Dychko, the No 2 seed.

Joyce met Yoka in the final and it was close, but most of us at ringside believed that Joyce had done enough to win and take the gold. It was not the biggest outrage in Rio; Michael Conlan’s loss in the quarter-final to Vladimir Nikitin was far worse.

Jalolov won the gold medal in Tokyo four years later and is back in Paris as the No 1 seed. Jalolov is also unbeaten in 14 fights as a professional and so far, in his pro career, nobody has heard the last bell.

In the semi-final in Tokyo, Jalolov stopped Frazer Clarke in the third round. In Paris, it looks like the British boxer Delicious Orie will meet Jalolov in the semi-final.

Jalolov, who is known as the Big Uzbek, also won the amateur world championship in 2019 and 2023. He is 30, which is old for an alleged amateur boxer, and he stands just shy of 6ft 8in in his padded socks. As a reward for each of his world championship wins and the Olympic gold, he has been given close to a million dollars by the government in Uzbekistan. There is bold talk of a big professional fight this year.

Jalolov occupies a historically murky zone in the so-called amateur sport; he appears to be a state-controlled and funded boxer, just like the Cold War fighters from the Soviet Bloc countries – and I include the mighty Cubans on that list.

open image in gallery

open image in gallery

Orie, it is true, is the beneficiary of funding at the GB centre in Sheffield and has benefits of which British boxers from before 2010 could have only dreamt. However, it is not the type of support that Havana, Moscow and now Tashkent can provide their boxers.

In the late Sixties, the Seventies and the Eighties, the boxers from under the Cold War banner dominated at the Olympics, the European and – after 1974 – the world championships. Jalolov is part of that tradition.

On Saturday 27 July, Joyce fights Derek Chisora at the O2 for the right to remain a fringe contender in a lucrative professional business; on the same day, in Paris, the Olympic boxing starts for Jalolov. A win for Joyce will lead to a big fight, possibly in Saudi Arabia later this year; a win or three for Jalolov will lead to another gold medal and a visit to the presidential palace in Tashkent to collect $500,000. Not a bad way to celebrate victory in an amateur sport.

And perhaps, who knows, Jalolov might get an invite to the Riyadh heavyweight party and the chance at revenge against Joyce. Since losing to Joyce in Rio, I calculate that Jalolov has only lost once over the three-round distance, and that defeat was avenged. Joyce and Jalolov, two giant Olympians, might have some unfinished business.