Las Vegas Has Factored Large in the Rise of French Boxing Star Bakary Samake

Las Vegas is a magnet to boxers from around the world who come here for the high-grade sparring that isn’t available in their home country. In the last 21 months, Bakary Samake, a 22-year-old Frenchman, ranked #2 by the WBC at 154 pounds, has been here six times.

The son of immigrants – his father grew up in Mali; his mother is from the Ivory Coast – Samake was born and raised in gritty Aubervilliers, a district in Paris, roughly five miles from the city center. He comes from a boxing family. His father, grandfather, and an uncle were boxers. In family lore, his uncle once fought Muhammad Ali during one of Ali’s many visits to Africa, but there is no record of it.

Bakary’s father, Issa Samake, runs a gym in Aubervilliers. Olympic medalists Tony Yoka and Souleymane Cissokho have trained there. Issa is his son’s trainer, manager, and promoter. Joining Bakary and his dad on their current Las Vegas sojourn is Bakary’s young publicist Yanis Daho who has worked with MMA athletes and doubles as the team’s translator. “I run Bakary’s social media platforms,” he notes, referencing the new world order.

Team Samake timed this visit so that they could attend the big fight between Canelo Alvarez and Terence Crawford which drew an announced crowd of 70,482, the largest crowd ever at five-year-old Allegiant Stadium. (Wrestlemania41, a two-day event, drew a combined turnout of 118,641.)

Although Bakary Samake never sparred with Terence Crawford, they had a nodding acquaintance, having crossed paths several times in the Top Rank Gym. “I was so happy that Terence won the fight,” says Samake. “I thought he put on a masterclass.”

Growing up, Bakary tried his hand at basketball, ice hockey, and swimming, but found his niche in boxing. He turned pro at age 17, making his debut in Luxembourg as one cannot box professionally in France until one has reached the age of 18.

In Samake’s most recent fight, he advanced his record to 18-0 (10 KOs) with an eighth-round stoppage of South Africa’s Roarke Knapp. Samake collapsed Knapp with a debilitating punch to the body followed by a left hook to the head that left the South African in such distress that the referee waved the fight off without bothering to count.

Samake vs Knapp was the only fight on the card. It was the prelude to a concert by Bakary’s friend Gazo, the popular French rapper. Staged at Paris’s La Defense Arena, the largest indoor stadium in Europe, it drew an announced crowd of 38,500 with the fight airing on RMC TV, France’s leading all-sports network. When we asked Bakary if there were any American song stylists that he fancied, he cited the Chicago rapper Chief Keef who is credited, along with Gazo, with popularizing the hip hop subgenre drill. (We happen to know this because we looked it up. This grizzled reporter wouldn’t know Chief Keef, or Gazo, for that matter, if they bit him in the ass.)

Bakary Samake’s next outing will draw a far more modest crowd. On Saturday, Oct. 25, he opposes Venezuela’s Alejandro Ortiz at the 4,000-seat sports arena named for Marcel Cerdan. Team Samake boated Ortiz after two would-be opponents, an Argentine and a Mexican, accepted the match and then backed out.

Alejandro Ortiz has an eye-catching record, 25-0 with 24 knockouts, but his skillset may be inferior. He’s fought exclusively in Venezuela and only four of his opponents had winning records when he fought them.

At age 22, Samake is one of the youngest fighters to hold a high ranking in any weight class. What he lacks is name recognition, so it’s important that he stay busy. It’s no coincidence that his fight with Ortiz has been positioned on the same day that Sebastian Fundora is also in action. Because of the time difference, Samake vs. Ortiz will be in the books when Fundora enters the ring on Oct. 25 in Las Vegas to defend his WBC 154-pound world title against Keith Thurman who has fought only once since taking Mario Barrios to school in February of 2022.

“Coming here to Las Vegas to train with some of the best fighters [in my weight class] was always a dream of mine,” says frequent visitor Samake who heads back to Paris with his cohorts on Monday. The larger dream, of course, is to win a world title and the young Frenchman has made considerable headway.

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Special thanks to Top Rank Gym overseer Frank Stea who facilitated this interview and several others before it.

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