Jared Anderson Gets Passed Over by Zhilei Zhang
When he next slides into the ring, highly touted heavyweight fighter Jared “The Real Big Baby” Anderson (17-0, 15 KO’s) will take on Martin Bakole. Yet, if things had gone according to plan, The Real Big Baby, ranked #4 (WBO), #5 (WBC), #5 (IBF) and #13 (WBA), would have been testing his might against the challenge of Chinese heavyweight Zhilei “Big Bang” Zhang (27-2-1, 22 KO’s) after his knockout of Deontay Wilder. Sadly for Anderson, this will not be the case, as he explained on The MMA Hour with Ariel Helwani.
“Yea, I actually asked for Zhang. Everybody seen the post that I made about Top Rank, but I’m not sure everybody seen the post that I made about Zhilei Zhang when I said I want to fight him next. I was turned down by him. I won’t release a name or anything – my source, but for sure, directly after the fight, after he beat Deontay, I said, ‘why not fight Zhang?’”
“‘Why would I wait to fight anybody else or pick a different opponent when he just beat up the person that I was supposed to fight? So with that being said, I did get turned down for that fight, at the moment. I’m not saying it won’t happen in the future, but I did get turned down for that fight, But I am not against that fight at all.”
NO SIDE ORDERS
As luck would have it, Zhang, #3 (WBO), #3 (WBC) #6 (IBF) and #8 (WBA), was scheduled to be interviewed on that same broadcast. He would confirm what Anderson had said.
“Jared Anderson is a great fighter, I give him nothing but respect and he has done this in his way. So far in my position, I’m looking to fight for the title and Jared Anderson is a great prospect and I am not looking to fight a prospect right now. I’m looking to fight tough guys there – Tyson Fury, Oleksandr Usyk. I am looking for championships, I’m not looking to fight a prospect.”
On the one hand, it’s understandable that Zhang wants to compete for a world title. On the other hand however, given how close they are in the rankings and since neither have competed for a world title, this seems like something of a missed opportunity. Especially since Big Bang does not have any fight scheduled and the match versus Anderson would have put him right back on a huge stage, with a tremendous audience against a notable opponent.
NEXT UP TO BAT
As it stands though, The Real Big Baby will face Bakole on August 3 in what he believes to be his biggest test to date, on paper. Therefore, it will be very interesting to see how he holds up under the continued scrutiny as the challenges and hurdles continue to grow higher and higher. The upcoming matchup will be the first of the year for Bakole, ranked #1(WBA), #6 (WBC), #11 (WBO) and #14 (IBF), since his October 28, 2023 fourth round TKO of Carlos Takam.
In fact, Bakole is on a nine-fight win streak since his defeat to Michael Hunter by way of tenth round TKO, well back on October 13, 2018. Given the seeming potential difficulty of his opponent, this should stand as a great measuring stick for where Anderson’s skills have progressed to.
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