Joe Lasisi is African light heavyweight champion, WABU champion and the undefeated Nigerian champion but one major regret in his life is not winning a world title. He tells KAZEEM BUSARI how his dream almost came to reality
At what age did you get into boxing?
I started boxing at the age of 18 in Alakoro, Lagos. Many of my mates were going into football and table tennis at the time but my interest was in boxing because my elder brother, Ayoola, was a boxer and I tagged along whenever he was going to training. He was my role model. I would hide in a corner, watching him and his friends train, but later I started joining them to train properly.
Were you not seen as a bully among your classmates when you started?
I didn’t let anyone at school know I was boxing. It was not part of school’s sports; by then there were only athletics, football and table tennis. My parents mustn’t know I was into boxing, they wanted us to focus on education. Besides, the school I attended was Catholic and they frowned at any form of aggressive sport. My father didn’t know I was boxing until he heard my name on the radio and watched me on television. When I was still courting my wife, she didn’t also know I was a boxer. I was afraid she would see me as a violent man and leave me. Whenever she was coming to visit me, I would conceal my boxing kits under the bed until she left. She only got to know after we married.
Do you ever look back and wished you had another life?
I thank God for what He has done for me. If not for boxing I would not be known by anyone. The sport brought fame to me and my family. I tried not to disappoint my country whenever I was at international events. I had a wonderful life as an active boxer, and I’m still enjoying the benefits even when I retired. Why would I desire a different life? I’m not saying things wouldn’t have been different if I chose a different career but it has been rewarding for me.
But many boxers still complain that professional boxing is not lucrative in Nigeria. Does it mean there was money in the sport in your time?
There was no money; what we had was interest in the sport. What motivated us was the desire to win and be seen as champions. It was not only in boxing; the footballers also played with passion to win. Things are very different nowadays. There’s no longer passion in sports because they all want to earn big money. I’m not saying it is wrong, I just don’t think it should be the basis for going into sports. This is why we have mediocrity in Nigerian sport. Everybody is looking for what they can get from the country not what they can win for her.
The 1981 National Sports Festival in Benin was your last amateur outing. You didn’t win any medal for Kaduna State, which you represented, yet you stood out at the competition.
I was expecting to be selected by the national coaches for the 1982 Commonwealth Games. That was why I put up my best. That was the first time I fought Jeremiah Okorodudu and knocked him out in the second round while the former Bendel State Governor (Samuel Ogbemudia) was watching. It was at that event that the famous Roland Omoruyi of Bendel State was also beaten by Sani Mohammed. But both Sani and I were not selected for the Commonwealth Games while Okorodudu and Omoruyi made the team. By that time, not many people knew me in Lagos because they thought I was Hausa. Even Okorodudu made fun of me before the fight but I did my talking in the ring.
You fought Okorodudu again in 1985 and in 1988, and there were controversies that you hypnotised him with juju to win the contest.
Why was Okorodudu the only one that complained I used juju against him? He was a bad loser and didn’t want to admit he was no match for me. I was way better, I trained better, and I was discipline. He should have focussed on what made him fail in our first professional fight before he challenged me again in the USA for the second fight. Some people, including my manager, didn’t want me to fight Okorodudu because I was preparing for a world title, but he insisted he wanted to beat me. I knew I was going to beat him and I was determined to put an end to the stories he was peddling about, so I accepted to fight him. Nobody told him to surrender when the punches became too much for him to bear. I think I earned his respect from that day.
Your victory against Okorodudu also earned you a nickname ‘Smoking Joe.’
Yes. My fans coined the nickname from my first name Joseph. They actually said I was smoking hot with my punches; it wasn’t that I smoked cigars. During my fights, I usually didn’t smile or show any form of familiarity with my opponents or anyone around. My fans recognised my tough mien.
You won the African Boxing Union light heavyweight title in 1986 but it didn’t appear anyone had defeated you to claim it back.
I won the title after beating Lottie Mwale of Zambia in Lusaka in what I still consider the toughest fight of my career. It was the toughest because Mwale was better and I fought with raw talent. He almost won the bout but I took him out in the eighth round to claim the title. For some funny reasons, I didn’t get the belt until 10 years later when I successfully defended it against Onebo Maxime in Abidjan, Ivory Coast. I still have the belt with me.
You eventually had your chance to win the WBA world title in 1989 but you lost to Virgil Hill.
I lost that fight due to politics of the sport. I was planning on fighting for the IBF or WBC title but I later got to know it was the WBA title. Nigerians regarded the WBA title as apartheid belt and inferior to the first two. I didn’t have any support from Nigeria as I headed for the fight. We were only four Nigerians at the venue of the fight and, even then, I put up a good show. The referee, however, had a different plan because he counted me out on technical grounds. It was later reported that the ref stopped the fight because I was bleeding, that was not the truth. In fact, I was on the verge of winning as my opponent was showing signs of exhaustion. The funny thing was Virgil was like a brother to me. We were sparring partners and also family friends. Before the fight, I sought support from the Nigerian embassy in New York but nothing came from them. I had to buy pieces of cloths to sew the Nigeria flag on the day of the fight. If I had died during the fight, the Nigerian government would have asked who sent me to go and fight. They would have denied me. But if I had won, they would have celebrated me, even when they refused to support me.
Boxing doesn’t get as much support as it had in the past. What do you think is the problem?
The government officials don’t really support sport in Nigeria; the support you see in football exists because of what they would gain from it. They don’t support other sports because they don’t get as much money from them. Let me tell you one secret. When I won the African title in 1986, the promoter game Mwale $10,000 but I got N10,000 from the contest. People were just cheering me as champion but they knew little of what we earned in Nigeria. Out of that money, the boxing board got 10 per cent, the coaches got theirs, and I paid some other monies here and there. At the end of the day, I had just N200 in pocket when I got home in Kaduna. Even with that, I was extremely proud; what I wanted was to be famous with the fight and I got it. But when I relocated to the USA, I had the best experience in boxing. My first fight earned me $50,000. By that time, that was big money. But that money was not lucrative enough for me to relocate permanently to the USA. I thought of the tax I had to pay, how I was going to fend for my family and every other thing.
Many of us waited endlessly to see Joe Lasisi versus Bash Ali before you retired.
That fight would not have happened. It’s like telling Bash Ali to come and commit suicide. Bash himself tactically dodged the challenge. I wanted to fight him, we had almost concluded the arrangement but some thugs didn’t want the fight to hold.
You were planning a boxing programme for the youths recently. How has it gone?
I’ve not been able to conclude the groundwork for the programme. I’m actually setting it up because I don’t want the young generation of boxers to go through similar things I went through in my career. They need to be guided and nurtured so that they can reach their peak at the right time.
Do you see Nigeria winning gold at the next Olympics?
It will be difficult; I think that will be impossible. If we must win any medal at the Games, then we should have at least five of our boxers among the best in the world. Winning bronze at the Commonwealth Games does not mean we can repeat such feat at the Olympics; we’re going to have more contestants there than at Glasgow. The other boxers are training with the best coaches around the world and using the best facility. What do we have in Nigeria to prepare our boxers? The coaches don’t know anything, the facilities are terrible, and the boxing associations are underfunded. I went around the stadium recently and I was almost shedding tears when I saw the deplorable state of the boxing gymnasium. It’s terrible.
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