World ranked heavyweight Lawrence Okolie has offered to spar with Jake Paul in preparation for his fight with Anthony Joshua.
Okolie is a former world champion in the cruiserweight and new ‘bridgerweight’ divisions. He is currently the #1 ranked heavyweight contender in the WBC.
He has known Joshua for a long time and has sparred with the former unified heavyweight world champion since the beginning of his amateur career.
But he is interested to find out what preoccupied Paul and led him to a confrontation with Joshua.
“It’s crazy. I want to go help Jake Paul and give him a chance. I want to go to Puerto Rico. Anyway, what I don’t want to happen to him is that he gets completely destroyed in one round or whatever if AJ turns it on,” Okolie said.
“I want him to get a little bit of a taste of what it’s like to be around a world-class heavyweight.
“I know the fight is coming and I think the same day, but I’m going to be out for a few weeks. I want to know what Jake Paul could have said to himself. I’m going to go ringside in front of millions of fans, a 250-pound muscleman from England, this big, towering guy, an Olympic gold medalist and former heavyweight world champion and two-time champion.
“I want to know. Maybe that person has a secret I don’t know about.”
He recognizes just how deep social media star Paul, a truly novice professional boxer, has to dig into against Joshua.
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Sky Sports’ Jonny Nelson talks about what motivates Anthony Joshua to face Jake Paul on December 19 and shares his predictions.
“I’m not going to sit here and pretend it’s not a difference in technology, a difference in size, a difference in everything,” Okolie said.
“But crazier things have happened, so we’ll just have to wait and see.”
He doesn’t expect Joshua to start quickly and thinks it could last longer than one round.
“From what I gather about AJ, I don’t think he’s going to go out there and go, ‘I’m going to hit him with a huge right hand and be done in 30 seconds,’” Okolie recalled.
But he added: “I think once Jake Paul starts messing with him, he’ll be fine (let’s go). (Joshua) hasn’t been in the ring for a while, so he’ll probably use it for practice. But if Jake Paul doesn’t catch him the first time he hits him hard, then I think it’ll get interesting from there.”
“It’s going to be a long night if Jake Paul doesn’t hit him and knock him out with the first strike.
“It seems crazy, but crazier things have happened.”
