I've sparred him. And so has pretty much every other top heavyweight. You name them they've probably sparred him because he's a big tough mofo and big tough mofo's give good sparring. Bakole isn't manufactured He was forged in the fires of mount doom deep in the Congo jungle alongside Fury & Joyce.
I don't think he's overrated, even after the Yoka win not many were saying he was the future or even a top contender, in polls against the likes of Joyce he lost by a landslide. Yes you'll always get a few who overrate a fighter after a win but I think the majority know Bakole is very limited and has a ceiling. No guarantee he'd beat Takam or Chisora despite the Yoka win, he still has a lot to prove.
Bakole is good fighter, better than Takam and Chisora, for sure. Chisora is quite faded these days, so I do not consider him a good measuring point. Truth is, after the first 6 top Hw names out there, it s hard to rank them as they will not fight each other. Bakole - Hrgovic - Sanchez - Dubois - Makhmudov - White - Hunter - Parker - Ortiz
Bakole is meh, but he has some good power and size i guess. Possibly he scratches the top 10 but we'd have to judge off more preformances. I haven't seen many overrate him
He's got a fanbase because he is big, hard-hitting and likable. That doesn't exactly make him overrated.
I like Bakole he’s like a Benavidez in a way, just marches forward like an ogre with a club and tries to hammer his opponent into submission.
I wasn’t impressed with the Yoka win. Bakole was just a sloppy, workmanlike guy who wanted it a bit more. He’s a Chisora to me.
He is the first who convincingly beat Yoka while many still thought that Yoka was the future of boxing, and I personally underestimated Bakole because I was convinced that he had no chance against Yoka, Bakole is very good...
I think you were overrating Yoka to start with he was never the future of boxing, his gold medal is tarnished with corruption, the boxing officiating in that Olympics was so bad they stripped AIBA of the right to host boxing in the next Olympics. As a pro he was inactive, in part for being suspended for missing not the usual 3 but 4 drug tests and he showed literally zero improvement, still no head movement, still stands in front of his opponent to be countered after throwing, no counter punching at all, no inside skills, all he's ever been is big, fast and agile, lots of physical talent but in terms of actual skills and ring IQ he's Amir Khan 2.0 with a better chin. Lots of people on here didn't have much faith in him, of the 3 top heavies from 2016 Joyce and Hrgovic were routinely seen as more likely to be the future, Yoka always had a big question mark over him. Bakole isn't very good, he's decent as he's big and can hit a little, but I don't see him as a top contender, he might very well be a gate keeper type of fighter, good enough to beat a pretender like Yoka but will lose to any real half decent contender like Hunter. He'd do well in my opinion to end up with a career as good as Chisora's.