‘Something has gone to his head’ – Joe Joyce insists Anthony Joshua fears his heavyweight rise and opens up on old sparring stories

Joe Joyce believes Anthon Joshua is now ‘letting his ego go’ and accused his heavyweight rival of leaking his ‘best bits’ of their now infamous sparring session.

Joshua’s proposed world title rematch with Oleksandr Usyk looked in serious jeopardy last month following the heavyweight champion’s decision to return to Ukraine following the Russian invasion.

While the fight is now back on, a number of fighters and promoters approached Joshua over an interim fight during that period of uncertainty, with Joyce, undefeated with 12 knockouts from his 13 victories, among them.

The former Olympians who became friends in their Team GB days were involved in a wild social media spat in March with Joshua dismissing the threat of Joyce having beaten his rival inside one round back in their amateur days in 2011.

The emergence of an edited, 40-second video showing the former IBF, WBO and WBA champion seemingly getting the better of Joyce in a sparring session added further fuel to the fire.

Joyce, who is back in fight camp having recovered from a wrist injury suffered at the start of the year, has now lifted the lid on those old sparring sessions and reiterated his desire to settle an old score.

‘He leaked, or his team leaked, footage of sparring, all his best bits,’ Joyce told Metro.co.uk on behalf of FreeBets.com.

‘Some of the sparring I have seen out there is from when we were drilling certain things. He can only throw left hooks, he can only throw straight arm shots, you can only throw bent arm shots, certain scenarios like that.

<p lang=«en» dir=«ltr» xml:lang=«en»>Anthony Joshua and Joe Joyce sparring footage has now emerged⦠pic.twitter.com/vuncO0sRQN

‘I don’t know what is going with Joshua these days, I haven’t spoken to him or seen him