Bakole was terrible, awful. Slow, plodding, no heart, terrible accuracy. Poor stamina and work ethic as well. Gary Cornish merged with Fraudley. Anyone with a dig would have had him out of there in three. Plus he couldn't hit a cow on the arse with a banjo. Swinging wildly at shadows the entire flight.
Absolutely not. I'm sorry but if your fighter says his shoulder is too bad to carry on and doesn't want to fight, you should be listening to him. You can doubt how much it really hurts all you like but the fact is you don't KNOW. You could see he didn't throw his right at all, so to suggest it wasn't that bad is ridiculous. If Bakole had won every round up to that point then okay, maybe roll the dice, but he was losing (although the cards were predictably much closer than they should have been) and didn't look like he was getting any better. It would have been a quit job from Bakole but it isn't down to the coach to decide how inured you are. IMO Nelson was just trying to save face for himself by not having his fighter quit. Instead the ref had to step in for him as he got worked over against the ropes unable to defend himself properly.
Billy knows his fighter and I'm sure if he thought it was something serious he would have taken the correct course of action and pulled him out.
Nelson wasn't holding a gun to his head. Bakole could have easily stayed on the stool on his own accord. He was looking for his coach to give him and easy way out which after everything Nelson has said about him, he wouldn't do. Bakole showed himself up last night.
Has anyone not spotted the irony of comparing Bakole to Harrison?? Harrison fought on with a wrecked arm and smashed Sprott into la la land... Ha.
From what we’ve seen so far Harrison has way more heart than Bakole. Harrison has been sparked so many times yet still picks himself up to have another go. Guys like Khan, Price and Harrison get ridiculed for getting sparked but they have heart in abundance (although my estimation of Price went down when he jacked it in against Kuzmin).
Regardless of billy having bigged up bakole too much he still shudda swallowed his own pride and pulled bakole once the fighter indicated he didn’t want to go on.... I know Angelo Dundee pushed a blinded Ali out against Liston...but there is a big difference between billy Nelson and bakole and Muhammad Ali and Angelo Dundee!
I think Billy was right to do what he did and he knows his man better than any of us do. I think it was the end of the 6th round, Bakole was unloading on Hunter before the bell went to end the round - if there had been more time left, he could've turned the fight on it's head. He then went out the next round which at the end he went back to the corner mentioning the injury. My point being that Bakole had already hurt Hunter in recent rounds and with this being his big chance on terrestrial TV he still had a chance of landing the lottery ticket left hand, he just had to dig in for 6 more minutes and try to land a big left like we seen Danny Williams do all those years back.
I agree 100% great post. I personally feel some people are missing the point, it's a lot about if a trainer should override a fighters wishes, override a fighters request to stop fighting. To me it was about getting Bakole out of there with the minimum of damage to him physically, mentally and also damage to his reputation. Nelson basically put it on him, Bakole would have had to completely humiliate himself to stop that fight, Nelson is suppose to be the one man outside the ring in that arena Bakole can 100% rely on and in my opinion he was let down. It's not the extent of the injury, Bakole is the fighter, he is the one risking his health and life and he wanted to stop fighting and so the fight should have been stopped.
Bakole could easily have ignored Billy and just said to referee at the start of the round he was quitting. Ultimately it was up to Bakole to quit and he decided based on Billy’s insistence to carry on. He also could have gone down and stayed down when he was caught by a punch from Hunter. It’s ridiculous to state that he “could have got hurt”. He could have quit at any time.
Yeah but there was no injury. Its boxing, he was gonna have to dig deep and he didn't want to. Even fans could tell it was a blag, so Billy Nelson defo knows what was going on with him. Nelson as well is being accused of letting the fight go on too long, the last half dozen shots, well the Ref should be in there quicker too. If Nelson didn't post on here, no one would be having a go about it, they'd just be calling Bakole a shithouse
Hunter is a likeable guy, I hope he does well, but how the F did he take rounds off Usyk with footwork/ balance like that ?? Hes got some really good traits going for him, bottle and heart blatantly, but his balance is probably the worst ive ever seen on a world class boxer, or it was v Bakole anyway !
