Ringside Report Looks Back at Boxer Ola Afolabi

By Donald “Braveheart” Stewart

For British people America holds a fascination. Conquering America has always, long before the Beatles managed it, been a benchmark against which many artists or sports stars have been measured. It may be an odd thing that to be deemed successful, you must somehow prove your abilities and be lauded in a land outside your own but there it is.
You can see that with fighters in the recent past where Tyson Fury rebuilt in Vegas, Amir Khan based himself in the States, and Ricky Hatton made statements there with his fans to cement his legacy, outside the ring, even if inside the ring he was less successful.

So, when a less recognizable name bases his career in the US, even though he was born in London, and is of Nigerian heritage, you can understand why. And so, it was for Ola Afolabi, 22-6-4, 11 KOs. Nicknamed Kryptonite he had a flourishing career, which began in the super middleweight, then light heavy divisions and then rose at his most successful weight – cruiserweight. Active between 2002 and FFF, he managed to hold the WBO interim title twice and the IBO title twice in quite the colorful career.

At the Marriot Hotel in Irvine, on St Valentine’s Day, 2002, Afolabi made his debut in a quite a prophetic manner – he drew in a majority decision against Gerard Barber who was himself only on his second professional contest. The move to cruiser came after a light heavy defeat to Allan Green in 2003 at the Marconi Automotive Museum. It was in 2008, however, that a knockout performance against Golden Gloves champion, Eric Fields for the vacant WBO NABO cruiser title which led to a promotional deal with Duva Boxing and the limelight as very clearly being shown to him.

For British fans, we would pay him some heed as he was British but to be honest, we tended to be slightly oblivious to him as he was not knocking on our doors demanding attention. In March 2009, we sat up straight when he came over to Manchester and knocked out in the 9th round Enzo Maccarinelli to win that interim WBO title.

Things were going well until he ran into the wall that was Marco Huck in his backyard, in Ludwigsburg, Germany. He didn’t fight Huck once, he fought him four times. It took him from his highs to his retirement and could be seen as the bookend fights at each stage of his career from this point onwards.

His first was a very tight affair, ending with Huck at home getting the decision on the 5th of December 2009. Huck was now the champion.

To recover Afolabi went on to take the vacant WBO intercontinental belt, on the 19th of March 2011 when he stopped Lubos Suda in the 5th round in Cologne. He then went on to defend in Altona against Terry Dunstan, knocking him out in the 1st round on the 2nd of July of the same year. Then came the opportunity to fight Valery Brudov for the WBO interim world title on the 3rd of March 2012. Brudov retired after the 5th round and Afolabi was once again the interim champion. He now needed to face the champ… who was…

Afolabi-Huck II happened on the 5th of May 2012 which would be for that WBO belt. It was in Erfurt, Germany and Huck, retained the crown as the fight, a brutal 12 rounds, was too close for the judges to call – it was a split draw.

The third fight was won by Huck by majority decision, and happened on 8th of June 2013 in the Max Schmelling Halle, Prenzlauer, Berg. After the fight Huck was ready to move on and noted that his conditioning for their second fight was not what it ought to have been, “This time, I was in tip-top shape – unlike to last year’s clash with Afolabi, where I was nowhere to my current level of fitness. I was focused on the task ahead of me and it showed.” Afolabi was to get some back handed praise from Huck’s trainer Ulli Wegner, “Afolabi might be the more refined boxer of the two but tonight he lost against the better man and the better strategy.” Afolabi was very honest when it as reported that he commented “I gave my best but it wasn´t enough. Huck is the rightful winner as I have no excuses at all.”

The rebuild happened this time by taking the vacant IBO title in Madison Square Garden when on the 2nd of November 2013 he won by majority decision against Lukasz Janik. He then shared a ring on the 10th of April 2015 with Victor Emilio Ramirez for the IBF title in Benavidez but lost on points. He did defend his IBO title by knocking out Olympic Gold Medal winner, Rakhim Chakhkiev in Kazan, in the 5th round on the 4th of November 2015.

And then came Marco Huck, round 4. Gerry Weber Stadium, Halle on the 27th of February 2016. Huck had just lost his WBO title when he as knocked out in the 11th round by Krzysztof Glowacki. Huck stopped Afolabi in the 10th round to take the IBO belt from him. Huck fought the right fight to take the title as he fought in bursts and kept Afolabi at bay. For purists though Huck deployed some rough house tactics before he stopped Afolabi for the first time in his career with Afolabi being unable to see out of one eye and the referee intervening to stop the contest.

Afolabi fought once more – in Hamburg – on the 19th of May 2017 when he was stopped in the 3rd round by unbeaten Mario Daser for the WBO European and IBO international cruiser weight titles.

He had clearly come to an end for his fighting career and the gloves were hung up. Ironically having been based in the US, much of his fighting was in Europe and he only graced the UK professionally once but he was a South London boy who did pretty good!