Lawrence Okolie makes diet change for next fight ahead of following Oleksandr Usyk example
Oleksandr Usyk is one of only three boxers, alongside David Haye and Evander Holyfield, to repeat cruiserweight success at heavyweight. Is Lawrence Okolie next?
Lawrence Okolie has ditched the vegan diet after moving up from cruiserweight ahead of a future in boxing's heavyweight division. But first: a world title fight against WBC bridgerweight champion Lukasz Rozanski on Friday night.
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Okolie, 31, has competed at the cruiserweight limit since turning pro soon after fighting for Team GB at the 2016 Rio Olympics. He had been on a plant-based, mainly vegan diet, cutting out meat, fish, eggs and cow's milk to maintain weight and increase energy levels.
But after, in his words, it became "impossible" to make the 200 lbs cruiserweight, Okolie is back eating meat again and "packing on a bit of muscle" before his return to the ring. He is now campaigning in the relatively new bridgerweight division, created in 2020 to sit between cruiserweight and heavyweight with a 224 lbs limit.
For Okolie, this step up in weight has "100%" come about at the perfect time in his career. After two years as the WBO champion, he lost a voluntary defense of the belt against long-time friend Chris Billam-Smith last time out.
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The first blemish on his record came in his 20th fight and is now almost exactly a year ago as Okolie gets back on the road. That majority decision defeat in front of a 15,000-strong crowd at Bournemouth's Vitality Stadium was the fighter's first outside of London since the year he turned professional.
Twelve months on, he heads to the Polish city of Rzeszow to fight in his opponent's backyard for the second straight fight, but this time as the challenger. It is an opportunity that Okolie expects will bring the best out of him.
"It will probably be one of my better performances based on that there's not the crowd there for me necessarily or that pressure," he exclusively told Express Sport from his training camp in Manchester. "I get to go in there and have a fight, and then you end up knocking the guy out, and you're world champion."
Winning would make Okolie a two-weight world champion, and the dream in the not-too-distant future is to make that three up at heavyweight. Achieving that feat one day would put Okolie in illustrious company.
David Haye, Evander Holyfield and Oleksandr Usyk are the only former cruiserweight champions to win world titles at heavyweight. Okolie accepts the latter as an example to follow.
"It's good to see that it's been done, and it shows how to do it, in essence, in terms of just sticking to what you're good at and executing," he acknowledged.
"Heavyweight is a very clustered division. No one's really got their foothold except for AJ [Anthony Joshua], [Tyson] Fury and Usyk.
"There's a top three, and then there's ten more that are all in the mix.
"So trying to jump into that [straight from cruiserweight], it's obviously difficult. But with this win, it will set me in good stead."
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