Martin Bakole will hope to complete a truly remarkable few days by upsetting Joseph Parker in their heavyweight fight in Riyadh tonight. The hard-hitting Congolese heavyweight has stepped in at very late notice to replace Daniel Dubois , who had been due to defend his IBF heavyweight world title as the chief support act to the undisputed light-heavyweight title rematch between Artur Beterbiev and Dmitry Bivol at the Kingdom Arena in Saudi Arabia, part of what some have called the best card in boxing history. Dubois was scheduled to make the second defence of the belt picked up last summer after stopping Anthony Joshua in vicious fashion in an all-British showdown at Wembley Stadium back in September, working out in front of the assembled media as scheduled at Boulevard City on Wednesday.
However, he later fell ill and on Thursday reports that the fight with Parker was potentially in doubt proved to be correct, with ‘Dynamite’ withdrawn after being examined by a doctor as promoter Frank Warren later revealed that his “gutted” fighter was suffering from a viral infection. Lawrence Okolie, David Adeleye and Mourad Aliev were all initially said to be among the options being considered to replace Dubois as organisers attempted to secure a late replacement opponent for former WBO champion Parker, who has enjoyed a career resurgence over recent years since losing to Joe Joyce including back-to-back eye-catching wins over Deontay Wilder and Zhilei Zhang. However, it quickly b.
