Aurélie Sacchelli, Media365, published on Monday January 16, 2023 at 6:36 p.m.
Tony Yoka will face on March 11 in Paris Carlos Takam, an opponent he was already to fight a year ago but the Franco-Cameroonian had injured his left wrist a few weeks before.
One year after the scheduled date, the fight between Tony Yoka and Carlos Takam will finally take place! On January 15, 2022, the two men were to face each other at the Accor Arena, but a little over a month earlier, the Franco-Cameroonian had to give up, due to a left wrist injury. A lot of water has flowed under the bridge since, Tony Yoka lost the first fight of his professional career, and he will therefore return to the ring against Takam, ten months after his defeat against Martin Bakole. This Yoka-Takam fight will be held on March 11 in Paris. The boxer does not reveal the name of the hall, but it will not be the Accor Arena, since it is occupied by the Martial Arts Festival that Saturday. After the cancellation of the fight against Takam in January 2022, Tony Yoka was then to face Martin Bakole, who had agreed to replace him, but the fight had also been canceled, this time due to the coronavirus pandemic which imposed a gauge of 2000 spectators, and the event would then not have been economically profitable. It was finally four months later, in front of a full Accor Arena, that Yoka challenged the Congolese, who won on points after a fairly large domination.
Watch out for Takam!
For the first time, Yoka will therefore play a fight having lost the previous one. Faced with Takam, who is twelve years older than him (42 years against 30) and has won 39 of his 47 fights, the Olympic champion will not necessarily start as the favorite, because the native of Douala has something to worry about in the mid-distance confrontation and on mobility. But Yoka will be able to assert his speed. The Parisian, often criticized for the quality of his opponents and mocked after his defeat last May, must win if he does not want to nullify all the efforts made since his move to the pros in 2017. He who claimed to want to fight boxers from the Top 10 or even the Top 5 (Yoka is 16th according to BoxRec, Takam is 41st), why not at the Stade de France, has an interest in beating a 42-year-old boxer, who remains on two defeats in 2021 (KO against Briton Joe Joyce) and 2022 (on points against Russian Arslanbek Makhmudov).
