Zhilei Zhang WINS the WBO interim heavyweight championship after beating Joe Joyce

Joe Joyce lost the battle of the behemoths and with it his WBO interim championship and any hope of a world title fight in the near future.

By a supreme irony Britain’s silver Olympian suffered his first professional defeat when the bruises inevitable when two huge sluggers collide ended in an eye-closing cut in the sixth round.

Joyce took the loss like a man, just as he and Zhilei Zhang took their sledgehammer punishment from start to desperate finish.

It was blood-lusting to watch but even more damaging to Joyce’s chances of mixing it with Tyson Fury or Olexsandr Usyk before his 37 years age him.

To his enormous credit the Juggernaut had no complaints with referee Howard Foster’s intervention, on medical advise that he was half blinded.

The result came by sixth round stoppage after Joyce’s (right) eye closed with swelling 

He also congratulated the aptly named Big Bang Zhang and added: ‘I should have done better.

‘A round ahead on my card when waved away into the night, he must decide whether to risk invoking the rematch clause or seek an alternative way back.’

Both these giants had sworn to take as many brain scrambling bazookas to the chin as might be necessary to stagger closer to a world title shot.

It is not often that two of boxing’s biggest men bring both blunderbuss punching power and jaws of cement into the same ring.

Joyce himself has wondered how long it would be wise for him to carry on taking such bombardments but is not about to seek sanctuary before he’s realised his lifetime ambition

Zhang has admitted that his only realistic hope of reaching the pinnacle of pugilism is to soak up the barrage he expected here in the rough and tumble of Saturday night in East London in order to land his Sunday punch.

So it was that they came rumbling at each other like tanks on an old time battlefield.

Joyce was first to feel the tremor, sent backwards by clubbing lefts and rights.

Worse was to come in the second round as Zhang sent him crumpling against the ropes and then had him hanging on to the Chinese waist to avoid a knock down.

It will be a blow for the British boxer’s hopes of fighting Tyson Fury or Oleksandr Usyk

Joyce was initially allowed to continue after Joyce received medical attention in the sixth round but it was stopped permanently shortly afterwards

The 37-year-old has lost his professional unbeaten record after winning his first 15 fights

Blood was streaming from Joyce’s face as he came out for the third. Fortunately the cut below the right eye and hex brought his superior boxing skills to take the round.

Then on to edge a gruelling fourth even though his face was turning gruesome.

That eye was swelling and closing with every southpaw left Zhang. Referee Foster called for a medical examination early in the sixth but let him carry on and he tried for a fast finish. In vain.

The crowd booed the stoppage but that could not prolong the fight.