Somewhere inside a boxer, inaccessible to them or anybody else – until it makes itself painfully apparent – is an expiration date. On their chin. The punches absorbed over the years, deflected with seemingly no damage done, take their toll. It seems sudden, but really it is a slow and inevitable accumulation. And once a chin cracks, it does not mend.

Joe Joyce is as defined by the resilience of his chin as any world-class fighter in recent history. Marvin Hagler’s chin is iconic, but equally well respected are his ability to switch-hit and the ring craft he developed and honed over a legendary career. Recently, Saul “Canelo” Alvarez and Gennady Golovkin amazed with their punch resistance against each other, though each brought significant helpings of skill to the table as well.

Joyce, though not unskilled, primarily relies on his chin to win him fights. He walks into his opponents’ best shots and allows them to bounce off, all the while jabbing and left hook-ing until his foe breaks down.

At its best, this style is terrifyingly effective. Even Daniel Dubois, whose brutal power punches landed on Joyce in virtually all varieties, couldn’t sufficiently deter Joyce from his forward march and ended up one of his stoppage victims. Neither could Joseph Parker. And given the success of both those opponents in the present day, Joyce’s wins appear incredible.

The trouble is that Joyce’s style is aging poorly. Even a granite chin can uphold its structural integrity for only so long when it takes punishment so frequently. Joyce met his match in Zhilei “Big Bang” Zhang, who thudded left hands into Joyce’s eye to force a doctor-driven stoppage in their first fight, and then put him down and left Joyce unable to continue with the mother of all overhand rights in their second fight.

Joyce hit the deck again in his most recent bout, against Derek Chisora, and though he was more off-balance than hurt, he took plenty more punishment in that fight. His chin may not be shattered, but the fissures are showing.

Joyce’s opponent on April 5, Filip Hrgovic, has quite a chin himself. In 2022, he rode out a first-round knockdown and went the distance with the same Zhang who brutalized Joyce twice, defeating him by unanimous decision.

In a 2024 bout with Dubois, Hrgovic ate a number of straight right hands that landed perfectly, the kind of punches that an uneducated observer might think could tear a head clean off. No matter how many times his head rocked back sickeningly, Hrgovic never wobbled. It was gruesome, like Larry Holmes-Muhammad Ali if they had both been at the very end when they met. The punishment was more than enough to ensure a TKO in Dubois favor, but still, what a chin Hrgovic had that night.

It surely won’t be so strong going forward. Both Hrgovic and Joyce have taken immense punishment, over a prolonged period of time, meted out by some of the most damaging punchers in the heavyweight division. Siccing them on each other now seems fair on its face; both are trying to rebuild from losses, both are in that contender-not-a-contender tier of heavyweights.

Unfortunately, fighters with once-unshakable chins rarely have happy endings to their careers. Often, a fighter’s durability keeps them upright, and thus in the line of fire, for too long. You could say this is why Derek Chisora is so difficult to watch these days; he is outwardly so much more durable than we know a fighter’s insides (including grey matter) are.

It may go that way for Hrgovic in a few years, and it arguably already has arrived for Joyce. Regardless of the fight outcome, one hopes their chins don’t let them down in April – by giving way completely, yes, but also by holding together for too long.

Owen Lewis is a former intern at Defector media and writes and edits for BoxingScene. His beats are tennis, boxing, books, travel and anything else that satisfies his meager attention span. He is on Bluesky.