“I dream of being a big“. In the portrait that devotes Canal plus to him at the beginning of May, Martin Bakole displays an astonishing serenity. The man is calm and recounts his journey in which boxing has always been present.
He was born 28 years ago in Kananga, in Kasaï-central, in the heart of the Democratic Republic of Congo which is still, in 1993, Mobutu’s Zaire.
His father is a customary chief. He is also a boxer.
Martin Bakole’s big brother also frequents the rings, but as a professional. Ilunga Makabu is the WBC light heavyweight world champion. Six years separate the two brothers. The eldest has always encouraged his youngest to put on the gloves, “it was he who brought me into this world“said Martin Bakole on Saturday evening just after his triumph.
The Congolese site actualite.cd which devotes a portrait to him this Sunday tells that Martin Bakole’s journey to success has not been a long calm river.
Phone credit seller in the streets of Kinshasa, then taxi-bus driver still in the Congolese capital, the champion was also a motorcycle taxi in the immense metropolis, “a year of ordeal“, according to the news site.
In 2014, at the age of 21, Martin Bakole nevertheless became a professional.
It is thousands of kilometers from the Congo that he will train. For six years, Martin Bakole has been perfecting his skills in the calm of Greengains, in Scotland. 30 kilometers from Glasgow, in the middle of sheep farms, he finds the tranquility to which he says he aspires in the portrait of Canal plus.
With his coach Billy Nelson, he works for “become a great“For six months, he has been living full-time and with his family in the small Scottish town.
Sparring partner
It is also as sparring partnertraining partner of some big names in boxing that he is perfecting.
Among them, the great Tyson Fury, recently retired after winning the WBO, WBA, IBF and WBC world belts (the four major international boxing federations) in the heavyweight category, the same as Bakole.
Ahead of Saturday’s fight, Fury had thrown his support behind the Congolese.
From the top of his 1m98 and his 120 kilos, Martin Bakole displays an impressive counter: 19 professional fights, 18 victories.
Saturday evening in Paris, the public was rather hostile, preferring to cheer the French Olympic champion. But when the fight was over, the applause for Bakole was unequivocal. The Congolese Minister of Sports also paid him a vibrant tribute.
In a sport oddly structured like boxing with its multiple international federations, certain world rankings are however authoritative. That of BoxRec is one of them. This Sunday, Martin Bakole is in 11th place there. Five places ahead of Yoka.