CNN
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“When you’re in Jamestown,” says Abdul Wahid Omar, “you know you have to be a tough guy.”
A poor neighborhood and children with boundless energy but few positive ways to channel it. Then comes boxing, opening a door to a less dangerous future – even sporting glory, with enough hard work. It’s a story as old as time, repeating itself from Havana to Manila to Philadelphia.
However, few places live up to the narrative like Bukom, Jamestown. Part of a coastal district of Ghana’s capital Accra, Bukom is a boxing mecca and finishing school for boxers like 29-year-old Omar. A six-time national champion, he represented Ghana at the Rio de Janeiro Olympics and captains the national team ahead of this year’s Paris Games.
Omar is following a path blazed by boxers such as Azumah “The Professor” Nelson, world featherweight and super-featherweight champion in the 1980s-90s, widely regarded as the greatest African boxer of all time, and DK Poison ( real name, David Kotei). Ghana’s first world champion in the 1970s. They, like him, honed their craft at Bukom, which has produced a remarkable eight world champions from its modest network of gyms.
The Ghanaian community with boxing at its heart
“We love to fight,” says local boxing legend trainer Charles Quartey. “It’s all in our genes.”
Ghana hosted the African Games in March, with a vibrant boxing program based in Bukom. Ahead of the tournament, CNN visited to interview veterans of this school of hard hitting, along with up-and-coming talent.
Bukom is a neighborhood where gyms spill out onto the streets. where blocks become makeshift rings and ropes are surplus to requirements – a packed crowd will. Sun-white posters of past champions tower over low-rise housing, quietly observing their legacy in action. It’s a place that loves boxing: “It’s not just a sport,” says Kodzo Gavua, it’s “part of their heritage.”
Gavua, an associate professor at the University of Ghana, has studied boxing in Jamestown extensively as part of his anthropological research. “It’s one thing that promotes social cohesion and harmony,” he adds. “On the surface, it seems that the people of Jamestown, because of the boxing, could be violent, but our experience is that it is one of the most peaceful places you can be in Ghana – especially Accra.”
But that doesn’t mean all is easy for young people in the coastal community. “Their life is difficult. Some of them can’t pay for their training,” says Quartey, a former amateur fighter who now runs a prominent gym.
![Charles Quartey, left, was a well-known amateur fighter.](https://media.cnn.com/api/v1/images/stellar/prod/240329121139-ghana-boxing-quartey-story.jpg?q=w_1110,c_fill)
![Charles Quartey, left, was a well-known amateur fighter.](https://media.cnn.com/api/v1/images/stellar/prod/240329121139-ghana-boxing-quartey-story.jpg?q=w_1110,c_fill)
“I was so lucky,” he adds. Through boxing Quartey joined the army. He traveled to the US and returned home to find his peers still working the same jobs they had when he left. Quartey turned his attention to the next generation and opened a gym to take kids off the streets and help them in and out of the ring. “We take care of them,” he says. “We clothe them, feed them, send them to school. We try to do our best so that these boys don’t grow up wasted in the community.”
Bukom gyms are highly competitive, internally and among themselves. Some of the major clubs, such as Black Panthers Gym and Wisdom Gym (the de-facto national training gym), compete in the Ghana Professional Boxing League, a team event that takes place regularly outside the Bukom Boxing Arena. The arena, which opened in 2016, is the first purpose-built venue of its kind in Ghana. It has become a focal point for the community and a draw for the nation’s up-and-coming boxers – a place to be seen in events such as the boxing championship, which is shown and broadcast on MAX TV Ghana.
“I see it as a university for boxing. If you are a good boxer and you are from another region (of Ghana), you should come to Jamestown,” says Ofori Asare, coach of the national team, dubbed “The Black Bombers”.
The Black Bombers are the most successful of them all Ghana’s Olympic teams, responsible for four of the country’s total of five medals since it began competing in 1952. The team was in force in March at the African Games, a major event and a major milestone on the road to the Olympics .
The program was hosted by Bukom Boxing Arena, with the finals taking place on March 22.
Among those triumphs was Samuel Taki, a bronze medalist at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics – the country’s first Olympic medal since 1992.
Born and raised in Bukom, Takyi started boxing at the age of nine and now at the age of 23 trains at Wisdom Boxing Gym. “This is the home of champions,” he says of Bukom, naming past greats who went on to establish their own gyms in the neighborhood. “Boxing is growing itself here.”
Two-time world champion Joseph Agbeko is one such name. Agbeko says he is often asked the secret of his success. “You always have to be ready” is his response, recalling that he received just three weeks before his first world title fight in 2007. Agbeko would lose the title in 2009 before regaining it the following year – a testament to his fighting spirit of Bukom.
![Samuel Takyi recently took gold at the African Games held in Ghana.](https://media.cnn.com/api/v1/images/stellar/prod/240404092059-ghana-boxing-samuel-takyi-story-body.jpg?q=w_1110,c_fill)
![Samuel Takyi recently took gold at the African Games held in Ghana.](https://media.cnn.com/api/v1/images/stellar/prod/240404092059-ghana-boxing-samuel-takyi-story-body.jpg?q=w_1110,c_fill)
That fighting spirit will be required for Ghana’s Olympic hopefuls. No boxer from Ghana has yet qualified through the complicated selection process for the Paris Games, featuring continental qualifiers, world qualifiers and a quota system stacked against African fighters this year. Their final shot will come in May at a second world qualifying tournament in Bangkok, Thailand.
But there is still hope, especially for boxers like Joseph Commey, who won gold at the African Games in March and a silver at the 2022 Commonwealth Games (it might have been gold if he hadn’t had to withdraw from the final for medical reasons
The last generation of a family of Bukom boxers, Commey shares the nickname “The Jaguar” with his grandfather, a champion in the 1960s. Commey junior trains three times a day with a familiar road map in front of him: “I want to go at the Olympics… then I get a medal, before (turning) pro.”
Look around him and you’d think the odds might be stacked against Commey. But he made it in Bukom – and if you can make it in Bukom, history says he can make it anywhere.
“I think this year I will be the best boxer in the world,” he adds. “I promise.”
![Ghana boxing broadcast video card 1](https://media.cnn.com/api/v1/images/stellar/prod/240403092130-ghana-boxing-show-video-card-1.jpg?c=16x9&q=w_850,c_fill)
![Ghana boxing broadcast video card 1](https://media.cnn.com/api/v1/images/stellar/prod/240403092130-ghana-boxing-show-video-card-1.jpg?c=16x9&q=w_850,c_fill)
Inside Ghana’s boxing factory: Watch the show