Omri Bezalel
Author | Screenwriter | Filmmaker | Producer
PUNCHING THROUGH JAMESTOWN
The blood on Akimos Annan Ampiah’s hands wasn’t his own; it belonged to a boy who foolishly told him he couldn’t walk down the street. The boy punched Ampiah in the face. Ampiah responded with a left jab and hook, then stopped; he can’t fight blood, he says, it makes him feel bad.
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On that day, two years ago, a spectator saw potential in the 18-year-old Ampiah, took him to a boxing gym in Accra, and paid for Ampiah to train there. Today, Ampiah is on the national team, training for the All African Games and the 2016 Olympics.
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Ampiah walks 20 minutes every weekday along the shore of the South Atlantic Ocean to Attoh Quarshie Boxing Gym in Jamestown, one of the oldest districts of Accra. While his family wonders why anyone would risk disfiguring his face by choosing boxing over, say, swimming or lawn tennis, for Ampiah the reason is clear: to turn professional, make it to America, make money, then come back to Ghana and help his family.
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Inside the gym, fighters punch heavy bags that hang from a thick pipeline running across the ceiling; others strike padded sections of the wall, a few skip rope. The ceiling is made of tin, the equipment ragged, the mirror dirtied and cracked. The ring is a square of rope on elevated wood — far from regulation size.
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A familiar face in the gym is Charles Amadu, who’s been training there since 1993. He’s a Sydney Olympics quarterfinalist and a two-time intercontinental champion, looking to win a third title. Amadu, 38, is fierce and determined, but slow. Working three jobs, he’s free to train only two hours a day; he’s lost his last two championship bouts.
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Adamu represents the biggest problem with Jamestown boxing: an inability to leverage a sport that has garnered Ghana the most laurels, into sponsorships, money, and long-term success. Neither boxing nor Jamestown — which has produced seven world champions — has been able to propel the other forward, leaving the frustrated, resident athletes boxing in place.
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When asking people in Jamestown what the problem is with boxing, the most common response is raised eyebrows and a frustrated “there’s no money, it all goes to football.”
They’re not wrong. Between 70 and 80 percent of the Sports Ministry budget goes to football. Ghana invested about $9 million in its national football team to go to the 2014 World Cup. But there’s a federation behind football that has potential to bring money back to Ghana; FIFA paid Ghana $9.5 million based on its performance.
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There is no such federation behind boxing. Money made is individual, says Deputy Sports Minister Vincent Oppong Asamoah, and apart from taxing the boxer’s paycheck, the financial returns the government receives from boxing are “nil.”
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“You don’t have to think only of government always supporting you,” Asamoah says in response to those who point a finger towards the ministry. “Government has limited resources to take care of over 30 to 40 sports that we have in this country.”
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The 50-year-old deputy believes the change has to also come from the boxing associations, which he says need to ensure a level of accountability, democratically elect their leadership, and have regular competitions. But he doesn’t alleviate all responsibility from his ministry, saying the over concentration on football is something they’re “trying hard to reverse.”
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Asamoah has faith in the current boxing association leadership and believes it is the beginning of change in boxing: “If you’re able to think outside the box and get other sources of funding, that’s the mark of good leadership.”
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Outside the box is mostly where Peter Zwennes roams. At 51, he has been president of the professional Ghana Boxing Authority for over two years, and has recently hired consultants to help rebrand boxing to make it more attractive to corporate sponsors who feel the sport is too violent.
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Wornur Duhor, a 61-year-old project engineer, believes money isn’t the issue and would only help Jamestown boxing in the short term. He says sponsors, players, and fans all go to football because “they know football has a future.” Ghana needs to create a future, he says, where a boxer and his family know that entering the sport means getting a manager and promoter, and making money and a career.
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Duhor believes promoting boxers and building stadiums in all regions, not just Accra, will establish boxing as a long-term sustainable, marketable industry in Ghana, and not just a Jamestown activity.
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But the average boxer dreaming of championships often doesn’t see these complexities; he’s worried about feeding his children. Money equals motivation, and, as one trainer in Jamestown complained, “When you send a boxer home hungry, how can you expect him to come back the next day?”
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Vincent Akai Nettey, 39, is a professional carpenter who runs the Attoh Quarshie gym for no pay. For him, it’s all about sacrifice. “When your father won’t help you, you have to help yourself,” he says. “So we ask ourselves, how did the greats all do it?”
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And Ghana — the first African country to win Olympic gold with boxing — has many greats, like Azumah Nelson: a three-time WBC champion who became in 2004 the only Ghanaian inducted into any American hall of fame. Or former Welterweight Champion Joshua Clottey, who, in 2010, was paid $3 million to fight Manny Pacquiao. But many boxing fans complained Clottey didn’t perform well, saying he seemed too content with his payday, and not concerned enough with winning the fight.
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The reasons for fighting have changed, says sports journalist Benjamin Willie Graham, 32. While Nelson fought for national pride and a chance to wave the Ghanaian flag at the highest peaks, Graham says fighters today, like Clottey, care more about money.
Graham described how Clottey came back home flaunting his money, but doing nothing to help develop the gyms or encourage young fighters — a trend found among many champions who abandon Jamestown after their success. “Because nobody helped them,” Zwennes explains, “once they get to the top, they don’t feel they owe anybody.”
To understand the individualistic inability to capitalize on boxing, it is necessary to understand the mentality of the people of Jamestown and their history. During the 18th and 19th centuries, Accra developed a niche within the transatlantic and slave trades as a middleman country. But once slavery was abolished in 1874 and the British took over the coast, the government turned its attention to developing infrastructure elsewhere. When the governor of Gold Coast built a harbor near Cape Coast in 1927, Jamestown, which had benefited from close relationship with Britain as a trading partner, became too small for the British and began sliding and suffering.
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“This is the psychology of people who remember better times,” says Nat Amarteifio, 71, former mayor of Accra. He believes resentment is what fuels Accra’s boxers, but that the sport prevents them from moving beyond those feelings. “Mentally, this has not yet sunk in that they are now at the bottom.” But if they resent it, then perhaps it has sunk in, and it may be that they just refuse to accept it and view individual success as the only way out.
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“Boxing is a very lonely sport,” Amarteifio says. “And the psychology of that place makes that possible. But it also makes it very difficult for them to come together as a community to pursue their own interests.”
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But those who think boxing in Ghana is past its prime are wrong, as evidenced by seven world championships, the $3-million-dollar fighter, motivated boxers who conclude every training session with a communal prayer, and the older ex-champion who won’t quit. The elements are in place for potential change, if they can only work and come together.
In the meantime, perhaps Ghana’s greatest hope for the sport lies in the old-school boxing personalities that originally built Jamestown’s reputation, and that can be resurrected through young boxers like Ampiah, whose dream to reach the top of the world isn’t all about himself.
“I care about Ghana,” he says, drinking a coke and looking at the people of his neighborhood sitting at a beach-side bar on a Saturday afternoon. “Once you have money, you can help people. People help me, I have to help people.”