Turki Alalshikh dropped the Cardiff lineup on X on Wednesday, November 11, and one name on it has already landed on a lawyer’s desk. “Tyson Fury vs Anthony Joshua headlines a stacked card featuring Deontay Wilder vs Jai Opetaia, Da’Mazion Vanhouter vs Michael Essomba, and Martin Bakole vs Solomon Adebayo,” he wrote on X, tagging Ring Magazine and promising more fights to come.
Two days later, MiddleEasy reported that BOXXER promoter Ben Shalom had referred Bakole’s booking to legal counsel. Shalom’s position is that the heavyweight remains under an exclusive contract with BOXXER, which would mean nobody cleared this fight with the company that says it holds his promotional rights.
That is Shalom’s claim, and so far it is only a claim. The reporting doesn’t lay out the terms of any Bakole deal, and it doesn’t include a response from Bakole’s camp or from Alalshikh’s side. Until somebody puts paper in front of the public, this is a contract dispute with one side talking.
View post on X
The stakes are pretty easy to see. The card is set for December 11 at the Principality Stadium in Cardiff, streaming live on Netflix, with Fury and Joshua on top and Wilder against Opetaia underneath. For a heavyweight like Bakole, a slot on a show that size is about as much exposure as the division offers, and it’s the kind of booking a fighter doesn’t want tangled up in a legal fight four weeks out.
For the people who set lines on these things, a fight with a lawyer attached carries a risk that has nothing to do with punches. If you’re thinking about a position on Bakole vs. Adebayo, the first thing to handicap is whether the fight happens at all, and that number gets decided in a conference room, not a gym. I’ve lost money on plenty of fights that went sideways. I’d rather not lose it on one that never got signed off.
What happens next depends on whether BOXXER and the Cardiff organizers reach some arrangement or whether Shalom’s lawyers push to pull Bakole off the show. Alalshikh’s post said more fights are still to be announced, so the lineup is clearly still moving. The fight date is December 11, and the clock on settling this started the day Bakole’s name went up.
