The IBF has ordered Martin Bakole vs. Agit Kabayel to negotiate a fight for a final eliminator to determine a challenger for heavyweight champion Daniel Dubois’ world title.
#4 Kabayel (25-0, 17 KOs) has looked outstanding recently, stopping Frank Sanchez in the seventh round last May and Arslanbek Makhmudov in the fourth round last December in fights in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.
Those two victories for Kabayel have gained him a lot of attention from boxing fans because he’s been fighting mostly in obscurity in lower-level contests in Germany during his 13-year professional career up until that point. It’s too bad that it’s taken this long for Kabayel to finally get notable fights to put him on the map because he should have been fighting the top contenders years ago.
Dubois (22-2, 21 KOs) is still waiting to find out whether Anthony Joshua will face him in a rematch. If AJ decides to fight him again, the rematch could happen in February.
Dubois knocked out Joshua in the fifth round in a huge upset on September 21st in front of a sold-out crowd at Wembley Stadium in London. It’s unlikely that Joshua will take the rematch with Dubois, given how one-sided their fight was, and what he has at stake by losing a second time.
#5 IBF Bakole (21-1, 16 KOs) is coming off an impressive fifth-round knockout win over highly hyped American Jared Anderson on August 3rd in a Riyadh season event at the BMO Stadium in Los Angeles.
Bakole, 31, dropped Anderson three times in the contest, knocking him down in rounds one and twice more in the fifth before the referee halted the fight.
Kabayel is a much better fighter than Jared Anderson, and he may not be so easily taken apart by Bakole. If Kabayel can hang around long enough to target the soft midsection of the 280+ lb Bakole, he may stop him as he did against Sanchez and Makhmudov.
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