Richard Riakporhe can do more than announce his arrival as a top level heavyweight when he fights Lawrence Okolie on April 5th. He can also draw a line under a long-running feud.

Riakporhe, 17-1 (13 KOs), and Okolie, 21-1 (16 KOs), have been circling each other for years. Riakporhe long coveted a shot at Okolie’s WBO cruiserweight title and tension has ratcheted up between the London rivals.

Back in 2023, they almost came to blows on the red carpet at the London premiere of Creed III.

Both men are now competing at heavyweight and will finally settle their differences at Manchester’s Co-Op Live Arena on the undercard of the fight between Dillian Whyte and Joe Joyce. The event will be Queensberry’s first of their new deal with DAZN which begins on April 1st.

At 35 years old and after a disappointing decision defeat to now-former WBO cruiserweight champion Chris Billam-Smith last June, Riakporhe doesn’t have the luxury of slowly but surely acclimatizing himself to heavyweight. However, if he's to make a high-risk entrance among the sport’s glamour division, the chance to settle his grudge with Okolie on such a major card offers plenty of potential rewards.

“Obviously, I want a world title and that's always been my main focus. But I feel like sometimes in boxing, there's some rivalries where there's no titles involved - or world titles - but the fights have to happen,” Riakporhe told The Ring.

“There's been fights in the past that didn't come off, like Lennox Lewis and Riddick Bowe. People wanted to see those fights and they never happened.

“Even to today, years later, people are still upset that it didn't manifest, didn't materialize.

“I'm here for a good time, not a long time. I want to be able to rest and say, ‘You know what? I did that, did this, did this, did that. I fought all of these guys, I tested myself. I challenged myself. All the odds stacked up against me.’

“It’s a good feeling for me.”

Most fights taking place years after initial discussions lose something over the intervening years but Okolie-Riakporhe may actually be a more exciting, explosive heavyweight affair than it would have been at cruiserweight.

Both fighters are huge men who will now be able to go about their business without worrying about the effects of boiling their massive frames down to 200lbs.

In December, two-weight world champion Okolie made a startling start to life amongst the big men. Firstly, he surprised many by weighing in at 260lbs. Then he opened eyes by blowing away the decent Hussein Muhamed, 18-2 (14 KOs), inside three minutes.

Now, it is Riakporhe’s turn to show that he too is physically and mentally capable of immediately finding his feet at heavyweight and he must do it in a high profile, high stakes grudge match.

His poor showing against Billam-Smith was obviously a major disappointment but stepping directly into a such a big fight is a real show of self-belief from the South Londoner and a sign that he feels he will be better suited to life at heavyweight.

Riakporhe insists that he knows what went wrong and - maybe even more importantly - why things didn’t go to plan on the biggest night of his career. He is confident that he can put the lessons he learned from the whole experience into practice against Okolie.

“100%. I feel like in this game, if you're not confident in yourself, you shouldn't be here.” he said.

“You shouldn't be at the table. Don't come to the fights. Don't step in the ring because it's a dangerous place to be. [I learned] many things, man. Many things about myself.

“My mentality. Things that went good. Things that didn't go good. Things that I should have done better. So much. When you lose, you really go back into a cave and just really kind of assess absolutely everything.

“Me personally, I actually believe it was a good thing for me. Yeah, it was a good thing that happened.”