Last night at Leicester Square in London, the movie ‘Creed III’ had its premiere. Yet some real fighting almost broke out on the night as some serious bad blood appears to have replaced the mutual respect unbeaten British cruiserweights Lawrence Okolie and Richard Riakporhe once had. The two fighters had to be pulled apart and, as no security was present, it was down to some bystanders, along with former fighter turned pundit Spencer Fearon, to try and keep the two men apart.
Thankfully, order was restored after a few rough seconds, yet the situation could so easily have got out of hand. It seems inevitable that these two will now fight each other one day. And the hype surrounding the fight-in-the-making went up a notch as a result of last night’s shenanigans (caught as they were on amateur video).
Okolie, 18-0(14) and the reigning WBO cruiserweight champ, later told Fearon that he will take on and defeat Riakporhe once he has “handled business in March” (Okolie to meet mandatory challenger David Light on March 25th).
“Nothing, nothing happened. It’s light, what I’ll say is it’s light,” Okolie said as quoted by Talk Sport. “That boy is light, and I will show him he’s light work. Let me handle my business in March and then we’ll show him. Easy work.”
Riakporhe, 16-0(12) is closing in on a world title shot himself, and he spoke with Talk Sport to give his side of the story of the near-brawl.
“So I was having a great time, I watching this film, ‘Creed III,’ it was an amazing film,” Riakporhe said. “I was just catching up with a few friends of mine and I saw Lawrence just come out of nowhere and tart talking to me. I felt disrespected, he came into my space. And then I just saw red, I don’t know what happened after that, everybody was getting separated. I heard the clip is doing numbers, it’s gone viral. It is what it is.”
It’s a guarantee that one day in the near future Okolie and Riakporhe will get it on. For real. You can’t beat free publicity.
The last word goes to Riakporhe (for now). “When we get in the ring it’s gonna be 18-plus, it’s not gonna be PG I can tell you,” he said.
The respective promoters could print the tickets for this one already.
