Martin Bakole questions why Eddie Hearn changed his tune about the wisdom of him taking the fight with Joseph Parker as the replacement opponent on two days’ notice after initially saying he was an upgrade over Daniel Dubois for last Saturday night.
Hearn’s Flip-Flop
Bakole says Hearn still backed his fighter Anthony Joshua to come back after he was upset by Andy Ruiz Jr. in their first fight in June 2019. He wonders why Hearn thinks he shouldn’t have taken the fight with Parker.
Bakole still has an IBF title eliminator against Efe Ajagba on May 2nd, and if he wins that, he’ll be mandatory for champion Dubois. That’s a toss-up fight if Bakole is in shape in the low 280s.
“Ajagba is an IBF eliminator. So, fighting Joseph Parker is for the IBF eliminator. They’re both the same. I don’t see any change,” said Martin Bakole to The Stomping Ground, reacting to Eddie Hearn saying he doesn’t think he should have taken the fight with Joseph Parker when he was already lined up to face Efe Ajagba in an IBF eliminator on May 2nd.
“He [Hearn initially] said, ‘That would be a better fight than Dubois,’” said Bakole about Hearn saying before his fight with Parker that he was a better option for him than his originally scheduled fight against IBF heavyweight champion Daniel Dubois. “Why change it [after I was] knocked out because that can happen.
“That happened to AJ. Andy Ruiz hit him with a beautiful punch. It’s the same with me. He [Hearn] kept believing in AJ. He went back to the gym, worked hard, and became a two-time champion. So, why did he [Hearn] change now?”
It would be a different story if Hearn were promoting Bakole and if he’d been with him from the get-go. Hearn would be backing him all the way, just like he did with Joshua after he got knocked out by Andy Ruiz in their first fight in 2019, and he lost to Oleksandr Usyk the first time. He stuck with him.
Shielding Joshua?
“They’re all avoiding. They don’t want to put me in with the best because they know I’m dangerous. Eddie watched me spar with Joshua,” said Bakole. “He knows how capable I am. He knew if I was in the camp for one or two months, Joseph Parker wasn’t going to say yes to fight me.”
An in-shape Bakole would be a nightmare for Joshua, and Hearn knows that. He’s going to protect his golden goose for as long as he can and not let him get finished off by Bakole. AJ’s career is already on thin ice as it is after Daniel Dubois blasted him to planet Neptune. He’s not going to let a well-conditioned 280+ lb Bakole do to Joshua what he did to Jared Anderson.
“I come out and call Eddie and say, I want to fight AJ in Africa. [Turki Alalshikh] says, ‘You want to see Martin Bakole and AJ in Africa?’ Eddie Hearn never says anything. He doesn’t want it,” said Bakole.
Last Updated on 02/23/2025
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