words: anicee gaddis
photography: gustavo di
Riding the line between brutal exorcism and a poetic sublime, boxing has produced more legends than any other sport of the last century. The noble art, as it’s historically known, has also fed an enduring fascination with pugilism as being more than just a sum of its parts. A solo act, an intimate engagement, one of the purest demonstrations of man-versus-man, boxing is ultimately a complex dance whose multiple rhythms coalesce into a strange tango falling somewhere between the lethal and the divine.
In Ghana, boxing ranks second only to football in terms of national obsessions. In the small oceanside fishing town of Bukom, an open-air boxing ring is situated within close reach of the local football pitch. Having already produced a wealth of hometown champions, Bukom has taken on the otherworldly dimensions of a mythological kingdom whose elegant warriors live, breathe and dream boxing. As the story goes, when a victor returns home after a win, the short twenty-minute journey from the capital of Accra can take as long as two hours once the locals turn out to escort their hero home. This is fight town. This is Bukom. This is myth becoming legend.
“The boxing university” has seen its fighters, most notably Azumah Nelson, gain celebrity status beyond Ghana’s borders and even induction into the International Boxing Hall of Fame. Bukom’s hierarchy of top contenders includes Alfred Kotey, Ike Quartey, Kwame Asante and Joshua Clottey, who won the International Boxing Federation title by defeating Zab Judah in 2008. One who aspires to join their illustrious ranks is Malik “Bukom Snake” Jabir.
When I met Jabir in the spring of 2008, his record was 11-6 and he was somewhere on an uncertain road toward becoming either a boxing champion or a journeyman opponent. He invited me to come and watch a training session at Bukom’s acclaimed Attah Quarshie Boxing Gym. Upon arrival, I noticed boxing posters in German, Swedish and Russian papering the upper reaches of concrete walls, while hand-painted slogans decorated the remaining sepia-toned space. “Rule #1: The trainer is never wrong. Rule #2: If you think the trainer is wrong, refer to Rule #1.” The trainer himself informed me that the gym, operational since 2000, serves as a second home for some forty boxers from the neighborhood and beyond. The current crop of talent, alongside Quartey and Kotey, includes the towering 30-year-old heavyweight Frank “Big Shark” Frimpong, along with Joseph Agoko and George Hash, who, at 22, is the youngest ranked boxer from Bukom. Despite his current record, the trainer assured me that Malik Jabir could still turn out to be Bukom’s next thing.
As I sat on a bench waiting for Jabir to show up, a row of children lining the windowsill cocked their heads with expressions of transfixed envy bordering on uncertain alarm. The cement doors, stretched canvas boxing ring and chained punching bags were peopled by five young men who looked like muscular furniture arranged at wry angles in the mid-morning light. Frimpong, a gravity-defying Goliath, began taking shots at a corner bag. Between the smacks of glove against canvas, you could hear him talking to the bag, scheduling his right jab with a click of the tongue, alternately rallying and admonishing an imaginary opponent. At 6'6", he towered over his more compactly framed colleagues shadowboxing on the sidelines. The other boxers’ chat—their Shh Shh Shhs to his Ahh Ahh Ahhs—the pounding of fists and the ether of sweat and breathing formed a cadenced backdrop for individual soliloquies. After awhile it seemed as though the men were breathing and boxing collectively, like a well-oiled machine at ease with its various parts.