Lawrence Okolie has sparred with both Joseph Parker and Fabio Wardley during his career.
Heavyweight duo Parker and Wardley square off on 25 October in an intriguing battle. Parker is a former world champion with plenty of experience and recent wins over Martin Bakole, Zhilei Zhang and Deontay Wilder, while Wardley is the former British and Commonwealth champion who has beaten Frazer Clarke and Justi Huni by knockout.
Speaking to BoxNation, former cruiserweight and bridgerweight world champion Okolie was asked to draw on his spars with both Parker and Wardley and make his prediction for the fight.
“Obviously sparring is sparring so I don’t take too much from it but when I look at those two and how they match up with each other, it depends on how accurate Fabio is on the day, cause I think that stylistically, he has struggled with boxers, so boxers give him a lot of trouble.
“He struggled with Huni and the first fight with Frazer Clarke. It was a close fight, could have gone either way and what got him over the line was his explosiveness, being able to land a shot, drop Clarke – and the same with Huni – and then he stopped him in the rematch, so is he accurate enough to be able to land on Parker consistently enough? Cause it’s not going to be one shot in round one that’s going to knock out Parker.
“So I do favour Parker cause I don’t think Wardley’s going to be able to one shot KO him and I don’t think he’s going to be able to live with him boxing-wise. However, if he does get the shots off accuracy wise he’s got more than enough intent and intensity to force a stoppage.”
