JOE JOYCE and Filip Hrgovic will meet in a shoot-out at the Last Chance Saloon on April 5.

Joyce (16-3, 15 KOs) was supposed to fight Dillian Whyte on that date until the Brixton man withdrew from the clash due to an ‘injured hand’.

That left the 39-year-old Juggernaut without an opponent but now Croat Hrgovic (17-1, 14 KOs) has stepped in to fill the void at the top of the bill at the Co-op Live Arena in Manchester.

Hrgovic has not boxed since he was stopped on cuts by Daniel Dubois in the eighth round of their Riyadh classic on June 1 last year.

It means that both men enter this fight off the back of defeats, with Joyce still yet to box since he lost on points to Dereck Chisora in July of last year.

As such, promoter Frank Warren says that both men are now drinking in the Last Chance Saloon although a victory will fire the winner back towards world title contention.

Warren told The Ring: “This is a better fight than Whyte and it’s risky. But it has to be - he is in the last chance saloon now. But if he beats Hrgovic he is right back in the mix, in a big way.

“It’s a very tough fight but Hrgovic is in the last chance saloon too and that’s why this is such a good fight.

“You could see in the first few rounds against Daniel that Hrgovic was very accurate with his punching so Joe has to slip a few of them, let’s see if he can do that.

“But it was also a hard ending in that fight for Hrgovic too so let’s see how he comes back from that here.”

July’s defeat to Chisora means Joyce has now lost three of his last four outings given the back-to-back stoppages at the hands of Zhilei Zhang in 2023.

Olympic silver medalist Joyce was once tipped as a future world champion but he is currently not ranked inside the top 15 with any of the four sanctioning bodies.

Warren believes a pair of wins will fire him into a mandatory position but he is adamant that a defeat to Hrgovic should result in retirement.

He added: “If Joe wins this one, it will put him in a position for a big heavyweight opportunity to get into a mandatory position.

“If I was him, maybe retirement would have been an option but he wants another chance and I owe him that. What I would hate is to drop him now and then let someone else get hold of him and use him as cannon fodder. I don’t want him doing that.

“But I’ve told him, if he doesn’t come through this one, he’s got to call it a day.”