The Beltline: Martin Bakole and Daniel Dubois give hope to heavyweights cut down to size

THERE is no defeat in boxing quite like the one suffered by a heavyweight. The punches responsible for it are louder, and more hurtful, and the scene of devastation is usually akin to that of a house party the morning after. Even for the lucky ones, the ones who finish on their feet rather than staring up at the lights, a heavyweight defeat remains a humiliating experience, with either exhaustion involved, or flailing limbs and desperate clinches only compounding the sense of humiliation. 

So big are these men, these heavyweights, there can be no escape from such a defeat. No excuse. No refuge. No hiding place. Any effort to hide, in fact, or so much as cower, is forever prevented by the very thing that ensures they compete at heavyweight in the first place – their body. Too large for any sort of hiding place to exist, there is never a time when a heavyweight is not conspicuous and easy to spot. This, ironically, is never truer than when they are reduced in size – only psychologically – by a loss in the ring. 

For many heavyweights, one loss will do it. Having relied so much on their stature, both physically and in terms of reputation, they will struggle to rebound from that first defeat despite knowing of its inevitability from day one. The bigger they are, the harder they fall, that much is true, yet, also, the harder they fall, the harder it is for them to then right themselves and return to a standing position. 

There are, however, a few exceptions to this rule. Two of them, Daniel Dubois and Martin Bakole, are thriving having once suffered painful defeats – the kind from which other heavyweights would have struggled to return, much less improve. 

In the case of Dubois, he has had not one loss but a couple. The first, and arguably the most damaging, was a 10th-round stoppage against Joe Joyce back in November 2020. As well as being stopped that night, that experience was punishing for Dubois due to the way it ended and how, by letting Joyce grind him down and ultimately break him, he had in turn provided momentum for a fellow prospect’s career. Back then it seemed that of the two London heavyweights, Joyce would be the one to end up fighting for and perhaps even one day winning a version of the world heavyweight title. Now, though, things have changed – and how. Dubois, by sticking with it, and understanding that he is a young heavyweight still learning, has managed to somehow outlast the man who, in a ring, once outlasted him. Instead, today it is Dubois, 26, who is mixing it with the best heavyweights in the world, while Joyce, his one-time nemesis, dusts himself down at the age of 38 having just lost to a 40-year-old Derek Chisora. 

To have predicted all this in 2021, when Joyce essentially broke Dubois, would have been inconceivable. For not only did Joyce have Dubois’ number that night, but Dubois, in succumbing the way he did on account of an eye injury, appeared to show in defeat the kind of frailties – whether mental or physical – liable to stop even the most athletically gifted heavyweights from reaching the top. Some even accused him of quitting in round 10; of not wanting it; of being yellow-bellied and a flat-track bully. 

How foolish they seem now, though, these critics. How foolish they seemed, firstly, when Dubois last year challenged Oleksandr Usyk for the world heavyweight title and gave Usyk a decent run for his money before running out of both steam and ideas in round nine. How foolish they will have felt, too, when seeing Dubois rebound from that respectable loss against Usyk to dig in and outlast – yes, outlast – American drugs cheat Jarell Miller in the 10th and final round of a make-or-break fight in December.

That alone would have been enough for Dubois; enough to silence the critics; enough to allay his own concerns and feel redeemed. Yet Dubois is nothing if not determined to progress and prove people wrong, and therefore in June he agreed to fight Filip Hrgovic, a 17-0 Croatian whom most believed would expose Dubois’s limitations – just as Joyce did, and just as Usyk did. 

Expecting this, too, Hrgovic started the fight full of confidence, nailing Dubois with any number of right hands and finding the Dubois head a target too great to miss. But soon, and to his credit, Dubois began to show just how much he has learned from past setbacks. For one, he refused to panic when under fire, and then later, when he sensed a shift in momentum, he took all the confidence that had once belonged to Hrgovic. Battling back, Dubois eventually outlasted the favorite – so much so that when the fight was halted in round eight due to cuts above Hrgovic’s eyes there was a feeling that the stoppage had spared Hrgovic from suffering a more conclusive one. 

For sticking in, both that night and more generally, the reward for Dubois, 21-2 (20), is an IBF title fight against Anthony Joshua on September 21 at Wembley Stadium. That is a fight that was meant for Filip Hrgovic, so the story goes. It was also the fight that was once on the table for Jarrell Miller and a fight many believed was one day a natural one for Joe Joyce. And yet, against the odds, it is Daniel Dubois who has outlasted them all and grabbed what that trio assumed would come to them. 

Similarly, nobody would have expected Martin Bakole to become the world’s most feared heavyweight when struggling to breathe or keep his hands up in round 10 of a heavyweight fight against Michael Hunter. That night in 2018 the Airdrie-based heavyweight from the Congo looked anything but a serious contender – never mind a scary, avoided one. For 10 rounds he had great difficulty asserting his size against Hunter, this despite the fact Hunter was four inches shorter than Bakole at 6’2, and some 43lbs lighter. He also had no answer for the American’s hand speed and his movement and cut, in the end, a bamboozled and beaten figure in round 10 – the round in which the fight was stopped. 

Still, though, Bakole believed. Six months later he returned to the ring to stop Mariusz Wach – no mean feat – and after that he soared, taking constant risks and always coming out on top. Ten fights later, he is not only 10-0 (8 KOs) post-Hunter but he has also successfully wrecked the plans and unbeaten records of two hyped heavyweights – first Tony Yoka, and then, and most recently, Jared Anderson. In so doing he provided them with both the lesson and the template; leaving it up to them to decide whether Martin Bakole, 21-1 (16), is the enemy and therefore someone to fear and forget, or, conversely, the inspiration, someone whose example they should try to follow. Maybe, when all is said and done, he is both.