Martin Bakole weighed a hefty unofficial 315 lbs on a scale with his clothes on ahead of his chief support fight against the 267-lb Joseph Parker on Saturday night, February 22nd, in Riyadh. Bakole (21-1, 16 KOs) would likely be a little lighter if he weighed in without his street clothes.
Bakole will weigh a whopping 30.5 pounds more than the 284.5 pounds he weighed for his previous fight against Jared Anderson on August 3rd in Los Angeles. He’s obviously been eating well, but surprisingly, he didn’t figure out if he would be offered a fight in the meantime as a replacement opponent.
Bakole’s Bulk
His weight has some fans believing that if he doesn’t get to Parker in the first three or four rounds, he’ll gas out and get stopped or outboxed. Parker will obviously be staying on the move for the first six rounds, not letting Bakole have a stationary target to land his big shots. Parker did that effectively in his last two fights against Zhilei Zhang and Deontay Wilder.
However, he weighed in the mid-240s for those fights, and he’s coming in 22 lbs heavier on Saturday. It’s not be nearly as easy for Parker to move for 12 rounds as it was at a lighter weight going up against an over-the-hill Wilder and a 291-lb Zhang.
Parker weighed in at a career-high, and that’s not good. It’s unclear what he was thinking by bulking up that much for a fight against his initially scheduled opponent, IBF heavyweight champion Daniel Dubois. He would have outweighed Dubois by 20 lbs, and it would have been next to impossible to keep from getting caught by him
Bakole will reportedly be getting a payday of $600,000 for this fight, which is a lot of money for a replacement opponent. Some believe that he’s getting more than this, but this is the number that Mailsport is reporting.
Martin Bakole has ‘weighed in’ ahead of his fight with Joseph Parker pic.twitter.com/vpIsciGwqo
— Mail Sport (@MailSport) February 22, 2025
Last Updated on 02/21/2025