After more than a calendar year out of the ring, it was an underwhelming return for Lawrence Okolie as he cruised to a details earn around David Gentle.
‘The Sauce’ defended his WBO cruiserweight planet title to move on to larger troubles in the long run, but it was a boring fight that remaining fans unsatisfied with what they had found.
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Okolie commenced quickly if a small wild, throwing some looping right palms, as the Brit was easily winning the rounds, but appeared to be struggling to settle into a rhythm.
In spite of not savoring considerably accomplishment, Mild managed to keep in there as the rounds passed by and he frustrated Okolie by turning it into a relatively scrappy affair.
As the fight went on the high-quality declined, as boos and whistles could be read from the group and some supporters even left the arena early.
In rounds ten and eleven Okolie turned up the tempo a small and experienced Gentle on shaky legs on two separate instances, but the New Zealander showed a fantastic chin to dangle on in there.
The Brit was deducted a position in round eleven for holding, but this did not have an affect on the final result, as Okolie comfortably received with scores of 116-112, 117-110 and 119-108 on the judges’ scorecards.
Soon after the combat, Okolie had this to say: “David Light-weight was extremely challenging and he experienced a excellent tactic of transferring around to his correct.
“But, at the close of the working day, there is no have to have to make excuses – just get superior. I just couldn’t get the very last shot to fall him and get him out of there because he was quite tricky and extremely superior with his hand defences.”
As for his up coming struggle, Okolie reported: “I will go in the ring and battle anyone. If they are watching this and they feel ‘Lawrence is garbage, I can do this, I can do that’, occur and come across out.
“I’ll place it on the line versus anybody and if they are fantastic sufficient to beat me, they are, and if not I have on winning.”
Okolie previously explained to talkSPORT that he both needs a unification with just one of the other champions in the cruiserweight division or there is a prospective domestic dust up with bitter rival, Richard Riakporhe, soon after the pair just about arrived to blows at the modern Creed 3 premiere.
Soon after that, even so, Okolie would like to choose on the heavyweight division, as he reported: “As before long as it becomes harmful I’ll shift up.
“And as shortly as the Richard, the unifications commence seeming like they are not heading to happen then bye, let us dance with the large boys now.”
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