WHEN FORMER top heavyweight contender Ike Ibeabuchi was released from prison after 16 years in 2015, he told me: “I don’t know if I am free yet. I won’t feel free until I step into the ring.”
Last night in Lagos, more than 26 years after his last professional fight, the man once nicknamed ‘The President’ finally felt that moment arrive. At 52 years old, after all the wasted years and unfulfilled promise, he returned to the ring and claimed victory.
Yet as he spoke afterwards, it was clear he remained shackled – not by the authorities, but by his impossible dream of becoming heavyweight champion of the world.
“I want to fight [world heavyweight champion Oleksandr] Usyk,” Ibeabuchi declared. “I want to fight Usyk for the championship. I’m 21-0, 16 knockouts. Why can’t he fight me? I was top ten before him. If Usyk wants me to fight more, I will fight more, I love to fight. But I want him before time elapses.”
It was a surreal demand, uttered after a fight that proved little beyond the fact that Ibeabuchi remains in admirable condition for a man of his age. Against his countryman Idris Afinni, he weighed just over 240lbs – lighter than he had been for his 1999 demolition of Chris Byrd, the night that cemented his reputation as one of the most dangerous heavyweights in the world.
Back then, the Nigerian looked destined for greatness. Instead, his career collapsed under the weight of legal troubles and prison time. Throw the Ibeabuchi of today into an over-50s heavyweight round robin with Mike Tyson and Oliver McCall and he might well emerge victorious. But the thought that his plodding and anti-climactic victory against Afinni qualifies him in any way, shape or form for a showdown with the peerless Usyk is, of course, fantasy.
The small crowd inside the Teslim Balogun Stadium in Lagos witnessed something that was a curious spectacle rather than a serious boxing contest. For three rounds Afinni backed away nervously, wary of the power that had once blunted David Tua and overwhelmed Byrd. Ibeabuchi bobbed and weaved, the old rhythm and craft still faintly recognisable if you half-closed your eyes. Occasionally he slammed scoring shots into Afinni’s body, while looking unable to unleash combinations as he once could.
At the end of the third round, Ibeabuchi slumped on his stool, breathing heavily. Afinni, though, was even more tired, or perhaps he had less to fight for, and he quit, his pre-fight promise to send Ibeabuchi “back to the old people’s home” exposed as nothing more than hollow bluster.
“I was catching him with good punches,” Ibeabuchi insisted afterwards, punctuating his point with a celebratory jig. “I was breaking him down with body shots. Sooner or later I believed that he was going to wear down. I thought he was going to come out for round four. But I had landed some punches on his body and head – a wise man wouldn’t want to come out.”
Perhaps. But a wise 52-year-old would take this moment – after a comeback win which preserved his undefeated record – to walk away.
Yet wisdom has never been Ibeabuchi’s forte.
He still talks of Usyk. He still dreams of glory. What – if anything – it will take to break his heavyweight title delusion remains to be seen.
