The 6ft 6in Londoner may have come away with silver but he turned out to be the Olympics' biggest loser in Rio in every sense.

Like all British Olympic competitors he is lottery funded, but had his hand been raised he would have won the lottery - just as Joshua did in 2012 and Audley Harrison in 2000.

Harrison collected a cool £1 million ($1.3 million/€1.1 million) from the BBC after turning pro and  Josh is already worth ten times that figure after becoming a world pro champion.

Joyce would also have hit the jackpot - if only he had hit opponent Tony Yoka more vigorously in the final act of Rio 2016. 

Alas, hard as he tried, Joyce couldn’t convince the judges that he got the better of his old French foe, although many - including myself - thought he had. But the split decision wasn’t diabolical - certainly not in the same league as the one against Ireland’s brilliant bantamweight Michael Conlan.

In a way it may well have been poetic justice as there were those who thought Joshua himself was lucky to get the nod in his own London 2012 final against the Italian copper Roberto Cammarelle.

The decision went against Joe so unfortunately he was unable to give us his famous twirl - celebratory high kicks and cartwheels in the ring -  when the result was announced, but I have no doubt we will be seeing it again because he is certain to turn pro. He said he would be doing so even before the tournament began - and I think he will make a good ‘un.

He doesn’t quite have the talent or chutzpah of Joshua and he is 30-years-old, though that is not an unreasonable age for a heavyweight boxer to begin a pro career these days. But he has strength and ambition and a left jab which Joshua claims feels like having a steel rod jammed up your nose. What he needs is a pro trainer who can teach him how to properly assemble his punches more effectively.

The public will certainly take to the amiable slugger Joshua calls the "steam train", who is literally an artist on canvas. He graduated with a 2:1 fine arts degree from Middlesex University and is an extremely talented portrait painter with ambitions to own his own gallery.

He also played rugby for London Scottish and, at one time, worked as a swimming and diving instructor. Chatting to him, you find he is more interested in discussing the merits of Rembrandt, Picasso and Van Gogh than boxing and he admits he might feel more at home at the Louvre than in Las Vegas.

"Joe Joyce is unique," says Joshua. "He's very intelligent, he's experienced different things, you can see he is a really solid athlete. He has got people eating out of his hand. He has so much energy.”

Joshua made a typically astute observation in his role as a BBC analyst, pointing out that the only way to be sure of succeeding as an Olympic super heavyweight is to remove the judges from the equation and plonk your opponent on the canvas.

The fact Yoka was deemed to have won the first round after Joyce looked like he edged it showed the thought process of the judges and took the Putney-based puncher into do-or-die territory.

It was always going to be an uphill struggle to turn the tables and perhaps he should have let his hands go a little earlier to provide a more compelling case to be awarded victory.

Of course it shouldn’t be like that and we should be able to place our faith in the judges to pass down honourable verdicts, but go to any amateur boxing event in the country and you will find boxers who feel cheated by decisions.

It is why so many amateurs can’t hang up the vest soon enough and want to try their hand in the professional ranks.

I am not saying every decision is passed without question in the pros, but there is far greater scrutiny and most of the time at least two of the three judges gets it right.

While the re-vamped tournament was generally well organised and received, the Rio ringside was rife with conspiracy theories, corruption allegations and controversy. Dr C K Wu - the President of the governing body of what is now known as "open boxing"- and his acolytes struggled to control the fall-out from some hotly disputed decisions. 

Several judges (some of whom didn’t seem to know a left hook from a meat hook) were sent home, along with the International Boxing Federation's (AIBA) executive director.

What the hell was going on there? We await developments with interest.

So here’s a thought. With AIBA seemingly so keen on introducing professionalism into Olympic competition, how about drafting in professional judges?

The scoring is now conducted pretty much along professional lines, so the introduction of experienced referees and judges from the pro game would make sense.

It wouldn’t guarantee every call being 100 per cent correct, but it would help eradicate the aroma of suspicion that continues to linger around Olympic boxing.

And how about AIBA still not allowing pro-linked coaches like Team GB’s head man Robert McCracken at ringside? That’s arrant hypocrisy, Dr Wu, when you are admitting pro fighters.

History shows that some boxers who were robbed by duff decisions in the Olympics went on to have very successful careers at the highest level of the sport in professional boxing.

Two that spring to mind are Roy Jones Jr and Floyd Mayweather Jr. So don’t be surprised to see both Michael Conlan and Joe Joyce making it to the world title stage in the next few years

Meantime, Joyce’s final medal of the Games helped Team GB to achieve its greatest Olympics ever overall, with medal successes across 16 sports, surely making us the best all-round sporting nation in the world, thanks to that Games-changing funding.

Yet I may not be alone in finding some disappointment with the boxing performance from Team GB, although they achieved the UK Sport set medal target of three, with Joyce, Nicola Adams’ much-predicted gold and a bronze from young heavyweight Joshua Buatsi - who also has the looks of a potentially great pro. Despite this they did not keep pace with the improvements shown by many other sports.

In fact, the Rio boxing haul was two fewer than in London and some say they thought they sensed a spark missing in the 12-person team this time with only the history-making, ever-effervescent back-to-back women’s flyweight champ Adams (surely it will be Dame Nicola now for boxing’s first lady?) bustling Buatsi, Joyce and women’s middleweight Savannah Marshall progressing beyond the last-16 stage.

Indeed, there could be stormy waters ahead for what is still called amateur boxing back home with a major split over the fact that the newly-constituted England Boxing supported professionals taking part in the Olympics without consulting the London clubs. Club boxing receives just a fraction of the £20 million ($26 million/€23 million) funding that goes to Sheffield-based GB Boxing over an Olympic cycle.

The 125 club London Amateur division - clubs which produced both Joyce and Ghana-born Buatsi through Earlsfield ABC and South Norwood - has voted by 81-25 to break ranks and join the newly formed Amateur Boxing Alliance. In turn, England Boxing have made it clear that clubs who have formed this alliance will no longer be eligible to have boxers representing their country in international competitions, including the Games.

No wonder there’s trouble at t’mill…