Bakole's flaws

At his size he should adopt Gorge Foreman’s defensive style with the cross arm defense and keep on pressuring working the body

 

Flaws....

Fat
Undisciplined
Lacks heart
Very poor stamina
Poor at cutting ring off
Easy to hit
Very fat

 

...and people here were acting like he was the next world champ.

 

Totally agree it is pathetic.

 

That's what I'm thinking. Old Foreman about maximized what to do with those specific attributes, and Bakole is just a sized up version of that. I like my earlier idea of hiring Witherspoon to teach him defense. He doesn't need instruction in offense, he's got that well ironed out. But he needs to be able to get and stay in front of opponents, and his defense needs to be more than blocking punches with his face.

Watching Canelo fight after Bakole showed, imo, an example of what Bakole needs to be doing. Hear me out. Canelo has slow feet, looks like a shuffling turtle. Yet, watch his positioning compared to Scull, watch how he moves at the same time as Scull while Bakole followed Ajagba. Canelo reads where an opponent is going to move the instant the movement starts, so despite his slow feet, he's always where he needs to be. This is how his height doesn't seem to matter. If you can read an opponent like Canelo does, slow feet don't really matter. If Bakole had been able to do that, he'd have won his fight via KO. So, whoever has worked with Canelo on this is who Bakole needs. I know this is such a weird comparison to make, but think about it.

 

This forum absolutely loves a hypejob...

And it loves to overhype mediocre fighters for beating highly rated prospects who are far from the finished article ("yet" at least, some finally make it, some don't!)

 

Ruined his career by taking the Parker fight at such short notice and out of shape, and losing his bogeyman status, which was his main selling point. Ajagba was a horrible match-up for him, but he's still a nightmare for anyone in the division when he's in shape and still a legit top 10 contender at HW.

 

he lost his dedication after that saudi $,happens to a lot of fighters

 

i’d love to see Bakole vs. Kabayel. Would be a fight of the year contender.

 

meh. That loss isn’t really held against him. He had no camp. Like, he got off his moms’s couch in the Congo, got on a plane, then stepped into a ring with no sleep.

he was much better against Ajagba. Got nailed good by a guy who hits much harder than Parker multiple times, held up fine. Looked stunned for a second or two, but recovered quick.

I’m not really defending him. He seriously needs to stop being fat. And his defense was terrible. But he was a hell of a lot better than he was against Parker.

 

I wouldn't say it's held against him, but it's definitely destroyed the myth that he was this indestructible juggernaut. The fight at the weekend showed that even a semi-decent technical boxer can give him a tough night. He clearly doesn't train properly or look after himself between camps, I think Bakole's defense has always been a weakness, but I still don't think promoters will be in a rush to throw their guys in with him at HW. He reminds me of a HW version of Subriel Matias, his whole selling point was that he was some terrifying bogeyman, but make the wrong fights and look bad a couple of times, and the myth disappears while the risk remains the same for promoters. Wouldn't surprise me if Bakole is stuck in limbo now for the next couple of years.

 

if I were Bakole’s promoter, I’d keep him busy with tomato cans if need be. Have him headline random DAZN fight nights (the free ones) against no hopers, generate more highlight reel KOs. This isn’t a viable path for a technician, because it’s just not that exciting to watch, but a dude the size of a battleship who hits like a truck? Throwing cannon fodder in there against him is crowd pleasing.

 

Bakole’s biggest flaw is a slow metabolism mixed with really fast, food shovelling hands