By Max Seitelman: Eddie Hearn is saying that Lawrence Okolie will be fighting Krzysztof Glowacki for the vacant WBO cruiserweight title on the undercard of Anthony Joshua vs. Kubrat Pulev in the fall. Hearn still hasn’t scheduled the Joshua-Pulev fight, but it’s believed that it’ll be taking place in November in the UK.
It’s risky for Hearn to put the 27-year-old Okolie on the Joshua card because the lanky 6’5″ cruiserweight has a bad habit of holding.
Okolie does have excellent power, but his fights tend to be dull for long periods because of his habit of clinching whenever his opposition get near him. It’s somewhat like how former heavyweight world champion Wladimir Klitschko used to fight, but far worse.
Klitschko was a clincher, but not to the level where Okolie is. The amount of holding that Okolie does is borderline to where the referees should arguably be penalizing him or disqualifying him in some of his matches.
Okolie with an excellent chance of winning
The 2016 Olympian Okolie (14-0, 11 KOs) has a good shot at beating Glowacki (31-2, 19 KOs) to win the vacant World Boxing Organization cruiserweight title. Glowacki, 33, was knocked out in three rounds by Mairis Briedis in his last fight in June of 2019 in Riga, Latvia.
That was an odd fight in which Briedis elbowed the Polish fighter Glowacki in retaliation to being clubbed with a rabbit punch in round two. Glowacki hit the deck in a delayed reaction after being elbowed by Briedis. In the third, Briedis stopped Glowacki.
Due to several errors that the referee made in the fight, a rematch was ordered between Glowacki and Briedis. However, Briedis chose not to take the match because of his commitment to the World Boxing Super Series tourney.
Glowacki’s performance against Briedis was so terrible that it makes it difficult to take him seriously as an opponent. Okolie isn’t a great fighter by any means, but the World Boxing Organization is lobbing a softball to him in letting him battle Glowacki for their WBO cruiserweight title.
The cruiserweight has cleared out lately with the small handful of talented fighters all moving up to heavyweight in search of more significant paydays. This leaves less than skilled fighters like Okolie free to take advantage of mediocre quality fighters to capture a world title.
Cruiserweight division barren of talent
Okolie can win not only winning the WBO belt, but also the WBA and WBC straps held by Ilunga Makabu and Arsen Goulamirian. Briedis would likely quickly destroy Okolie, however, but he currently doesn’t contain any titles.
IBF champ Yunier Dorticos is another guy at cruiserweight that would be a nightmare for Okolie, and, likely, Hearn won’t let his lanky 6’5″ fighter anywhere near him.
In Okolie’s last fight, he defeated Yves Ngabu by a 7th round knockout to win the EBU cruiserweight title previous year in October 2019. Yes, Okolie held a lot in that fight, but thankfully, the battle ended early with him knocking Ngabu out.
Glowacki and Okolie will both be dealing with ring rust by the time they face each other in November. Both fighters will have been out of the ring by the time they meet up, and you have to wonder which of the two will be more affected.