The traditional boxing, popular known as ‘Dambe’ in most parts of northern Nigeria has been taken to the next level by the founders of Dambe Warriors League.
The local sport which has been reviewed and regulated to suit best practices by the founders of the league, has since classified the boxers into weight categories that include lightweight, middleweight and heavyweight and are competing for N1 million each.
Speaking to LEADERSHIP on the sport, the co-founder of Dambe Warriors League, Anthony Akeleke, said the original idea was that of his partner Chidi Ayina who saw that it would be interesting to showcase the beautiful cultural splendour to global audience.
“Today we are here having this Dambe Warriors league because we have a couple of investors who have come in after seven years to see the vision we have and work with us closely to ensure the success of this league. So that is why we are here today.
“Damabe Warriors is a league like a standard professional league where you have professional fighters selected, eighteen of them across three categories, the heavyweight the middleweight and the lightweight. Six across each category.
“So what they do is that each and every two weeks we have a circuit fight, and they compete to be ranked number one. At the end of a circuit fight the sixth round fighter will be eliminated.
“This will be happening at the Kano Pillars Stadium by November. We’ve had our circuit one in Kano, September 3rd, we had our circuit two, September 15th in Abuja and we are back in Kano for circuit three today, October 1st, Independence Day, a beautiful splendid day to have such an event” Akeleke stated.
The winners in each of the categories will take home a whooping sum of N1 million at the end of the finals.
The league co-founder expressed delight that the sport is fast growing and he hopes that from the slums the sport will grow to an international event with people becoming professionals in the game.