Martin Bakole will hope to complete a truly remarkable few days by upsetting Joseph Parker in their heavyweight fight in Riyadh tonight. The hard-hitting Congolese heavyweight has stepped in at very late notice to replace Daniel Dubois, who had been due to defend his IBF heavyweight world title as the chief support act to the undisputed light-heavyweight title rematch between Artur Beterbiev and Dmitry Bivol at the Kingdom Arena in Saudi Arabia, part of what some have called the best card in boxing history.
Dubois was scheduled to make the second defence of the belt picked up last summer after stopping Anthony Joshua in vicious fashion in an all-British showdown at Wembley Stadium back in September, working out in front of the assembled media as scheduled at Boulevard City on Wednesday.
However, he later fell ill and on Thursday reports that the fight with Parker was potentially in doubt proved to be correct, with ‘Dynamite’ withdrawn after being examined by a doctor as promoter Frank Warren later revealed that his “gutted” fighter was suffering from a viral infection.
Lawrence Okolie, David Adeleye and Mourad Aliev were all initially said to be among the options being considered to replace Dubois as organisers attempted to secure a late replacement opponent for former WBO champion Parker, who has enjoyed a career resurgence over recent years since losing to Joe Joyce including back-to-back eye-catching wins over Deontay Wilder and Zhilei Zhang.
However, it quickly became apparent that Bakole was going to be the man to step in, with promoter and Boxxer chief Ben Shalom admitting that the “most ridiculous deal” he had ever done was clinched in remarkably quick fashion while he was actually on stage during the final press conferences in Riyadh on Thursday.
That is despite Bakole having been in the Democratic Republic of Congo when he got the call, with the 31-year-old only able to fly to Saudi on Friday - via Ethiopia - and missing the weigh-in as he arrived in the early hours of Saturday morning and unofficially then tipped the scales at a huge 315lbs - some 48lbs heavier than Parker, who himself had been a career-heaviest 267lbs as he weighed in alone earlier on Friday and had a joking face-off with promoter Warren.
Bakole had weighed in at 284.4lbs for his last fight against Jared Anderson in Los Angeles last summer. Bakole has preciously little time to prepare for the biggest fight of his career on the grandest Riyadh Season stage against Parker after travelling almost 4,000 miles, but that doesn’t look to be fazing him.
Martin Bakole is a Congolese heavyweight boxer and the younger brother of former WBC cruiserweight champion Ilunga Makabu, the latter of whom is best known on these shores for being the opponent when Tony Bellew realised his world title dream in memorable scenes at Everton’s Goodison Park in 2016.
A huge talent in his own right, the 31-year-old is now based in Scotland and trained by Billy Nelson and has a 21-1 professional record with 16 knockouts after making his debut in South Africa in 2014 and fighting across Europe, in the Middle East and the United States.
A powerful hitter and an imposing figure with skill and durability to match, Bakole’s lone defeat to date came after he was stopped in the 10th round by American Michael Hunter in an IBO intercontinental title clash at York Hall back in October 2018.
Otherwise his record is unblemished and he has notched up 10 consecutive wins since then, beating heavyweight veterans including Mariusz Wach, Kevin Johnson, Sergey Kuzmin and Carlos Takam as well as 2016 Olympic gold medalist Tony Yoka. Bakole has typically found big bouts hard to come by despite his talent with claims that no one wants to fight him, likely even less so after he dismantled the highly-rated American talent Jared Anderson in just five rounds on the Terence Crawford-Israil Madrimov undercard in Los Angeles on his last outing last August.
He has been looking to try and move closer to a coveted world title shot since then despite talk of a rematch with Hunter, with the IBF ordering another final eliminator for Dubois’ title back in December between Bakole and Nigerian Efe Ajagba after Agit Kabayel withdrew to fight another possible option in Zhang this weekend instead.
However, purse bids were later cancelled and that fight has now evidently been shelved as Bakole instead looks to spring a sizeable upset and punish Parker for taking what is a clear risk. While the IBF title is no longer up for grabs, the WBO have confirmed that Saturday night’s contest will be for Parker’s WBO interim champion status, meaning the winner will become their mandatory challenger for a shot at full champion Oleksandr Usyk down the line.
