Martin Bakole has doubled down on claims that he’s been a nightmare for his heavyweight rivals in training camp.
The 19-1 heavyweight recently claimed that he had stopped Daniel Dubois twice in the gym, and did the same to unified world champion, Oleksandr Usyk, whilst training in Dubai.
Bolstered by his coach, Billy Nelson, Bakole has been dining out on the sparring stories. When asked by BOXXER about them in a recent interview, he doubled down.
“They never come back to say that I’m lying because they know it’s the truth. When you go to spar someone in the gym, you’re not allowed to record it – because if I was allowed I was going to post the video.”
On the contrary, Usyk’s promoter, Alex Krassyuk, did refute the claims. Although he did give Bakole credit as one of the Ukrainian’s best sparring partners.
Bakole went on to say that he released the information because he was being avoided in the division.
“I need a fight. I want a big fight. They are avoiding me now, they know the reason why. So I should tell people why they are avoiding me – because they know what happened in the gym.”
He added the punches that did it, with particular emphasis on his jab.
“Uppercut, left hook, jab. All of them, I give them a hard time with the jab … They know I’ve got a nice jab, nice left hook. Everyone can get it.”
If Bakole is indeed struggling to find an opponent, he may well be lacking in sparring soon, too. He was last out against Ihor Shevadzutskyi in Poland – a third round TKO victory – and is now looking for that big fight under the banner of BOXXER and Sky Sports.
Coincidentally, Usyk is currently in negotiations with Dubois as his WBA mandatory challenger.