· Sad, pitiful decline of Nigeria’s oldest boxer
By Our Reporter
If Bash Ali were a bird, he would probably be a nightingale. If he were a nightingale, would he, like the sonorous bird, piteously die of shame because another bird sings better? Driven by his declining stature and loss of relevance – unlike the country’s soccer stars – to the Nigerian State, Ali has descended into a desperate strait. Thus his desperation to vent and reenact the impossible, like the proverbial soldiers starving to death in the battle trench; as the drought persisted, the latter abandoned prayers, marched up the hills and began to shoot at passing clouds to hurt the heavens for abandoning them.
Like the metaphorical nightingale and desperate soldiers, is Ali at his tethers end? To most boxing purists, Bashiru Lawrence Ali a.k.a Bash Ali, a World Boxing Federation (WBF) cruiserweight champion has finally transcended his vanity and the patchiness of his fame to descend and wallow in infamy.
The country’s oldest boxer was last Thursday, taken into police custody after a prolonged row with the Nigerian Export – Import Bank, NEXIM, over the sponsorship of a Guinness Book of World Record fight.
Ali intends to take on Rick Camlin of Britain, a 32-year-old International Boxing Union (IBU) champion and he seeks government financial support to host the fight. According to him, NEXIM Bank along with other corporate organisations were members of the Local Organising Committee(LOC) inaugurated on January 14 last year by the Minister of Sports and Chairman, National Sports Commission, to realise his dream of making it into the Guinness Book of World Records.
Few months ago, Ali and his team barricaded the Corporate headquarters of the bank over its failure to provide N150 million to facilitate the hosting of his Guinness book of World Record fight project. Ali and his team had arrived at the bank in a convoy to keep a scheduled appointment with the NEXIM Managing Director, Robert Orya. However, Orya was enraged by the large crowd that accompanied Ali to the bank.
The 58-year old boxer was months ago after the bank accused him of threatening to bomb its premises in Abuja before calling in the police. Although he denied the allegation stating: “I never said I will bomb their office…If any institution owned by government disobeys the order of Mr. President because of corruption, that institution should be closed down. That is what I said,” Ali and three of members of his crew were arrested and charged for constituting nuisance the following day – after spending a night at the notorious SARS unit. The court subsequently remanded them in Kuje prison custody.
The boxer claimed his arrest was an attempt to silence him from exposing the bank’s management’s demand for bribe.
While the public and fans of the former WBF cruiserweight champion mull over the intrigues that led to his recent debacle with NEXIM bank and his eventual arrest, boxing buffs rue the descent of the boxing champion and Nigeria’s pride down the steep slope of honour and acclaim.
From grace to grass
There is no gainsaying Ali has gone fallen from grace to grass. While the cruiserweight champion’s athleticism and natural punching power brought him acclaim early in his career, it is his regression from a well-rounded and promising boxer into some sort of a national joke that has defined his legacy.
Today, Ali is no longer an imposing physical specimen as he was in his youth; he can no longer defeat opponents using an array of skills: a stiff jab, left jab, haymaker, combination punching and evasiveness. He has lost form but the aging pugilist desperately hangs on to the glories of his youth; for eight years running, he has been desperately seeking government aid to stage a comeback fight and thus register his name indelibly in the Guinness Book of Records as the oldest boxer to ever win a fight with a younger opponent alive.
The boxer’s ambition to place his name in the Guinness Book of World Record has drove him to picket the Nigerian Police Force, headquarters of the ruling People’s Democratic Party and the National Assembly among others in recent years.
In the last decade, Mr. Ali lived for several days on the street corners, bus stops and gates of institutions he targeted and whenever he chose a target, he camped there and generates a racket until he is heard.
His cause attained notoriety in 2013 when the National Sports Commission set up a Local Organizing Committee for the fight. NEXIM Bank was offered a seat on that committee. According to Ali, it was at the inauguration of the committee on January 7, 2014 that NEXIM got a “presidential” directive to provide $30 million US Dollars for the fight. “That’s their role on the committee,” he said.
The bank however, denies knowledge of the directive, demanding for copies of the directive severally from Ali, who has repeatedly failed to produce them, according to the bank.
“NEXIM does not finance sports activities. Notwithstanding this explanation, Bash Ali did not relent but decided to adopt every means to extort the $1, 000,000 from the Bank.
Ali in turn claimed that, neither the “directive” nor NEXIM’s claim that it does not fund sports activities, is the reason the bank refused to provide funding for the fight. He said the Managing Director of the bank, Robert Orya, demanded 10 percent of the $30 million US Dollars support funds in bribe and he declined. He further alleged that Orya “also demanded $100 million US Dollars in bribe from the projected pay per view revenue from the match and I said no.” The boxer said after he turned down the bribery demands, since February 2014, the bank began withdrawing from the project and that was the reason he targeted the bank.
Notwithstanding the merits and ludicrousness of his debacle with NEXIM bank, boxing pundits aver that Ali’s action is tantamount to the antics of a diehard has-been who would rather die reenacting the glory of his youth than fade away into irrelevance and nothingness.
Ali’s fall from grace to grass no doubt resonates the tragedy of a contrived metaphor. It echoes the metaphorical “death” of the champion who was frequently discussed in the world’s many barbershops and sports bars only to be referenced too early as a burnt out boxing has-been. Judging by his recent fiasco, the public jury’s take on Ali would most probably be colored with biases of different shades.
For Bash Ali, the peak of his glamour and the beginning of his descent may well have begun on the date he got the presidential nod to stage what he considers the most important fight of his erstwhile slumbering career. The date was January 14, 2014; on that day, fate accorded his dreams of bliss a funeral kiss.
Even so, boxing purists would say, after his release from prison and extrication from his current predicament that, Ali was never the fighter he makes himself out to be. If this is true, could it be that Ali was fed a steady diet of “slam-men” masquerading as fighters? Did he, Ali, trick the public when he knocked out British challenger, Tony Booth in the fourth round of the World Boxing Federation (WBF) Cruiserweight Championship fight few years ago at the Indoor Sports Hall of the National Stadium, Surulere, Lagos?
Has Bash Ali been deceiving the public into believing that he was ready to assume his place as undisputed cruiserweight champion once again? No matter what the truth is, not a few boxing aficionados would readily contend that Ali’s mystique and career began its transformation from legitimate boxing greatness to circus sideshow the moment he became too desperate to resuscitate his comatose boxing career. While it becomes increasingly too difficult to look at what he has become now and not feel a pang of sadness for him, the cruiserweight title holder weaves in his own honour, a colourful tale of fame, knockouts and record breaking title defenses. It’s a fascinating yarn from a distance but up-close, it rankles like some grade C-movie tale of a washed up cruiserweight echoing refrains from A-list movie titled: “Requiem for a Heavyweight
