Ike Ibeabuchi answers FaceTime with his nose pressed up against the phone screen. His trademark mustache nestles on his top lip and a questionable internet connection buffers his responses. He sits on a bed, in Abuja, Nigeria, with his energetic niece punching and biting him, playfully, as he speaks.
“Which fight?” he begins, in response to the agreed purpose of the call. I reiterate that he is due to fight British veteran Danny Williams on Aug. 23, but he’s quick to rebuff this and offers up an attempted clarification.
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“[Danny] Williams had to pull out,” he continues. “But we have already got a new opponent: Idris Afinni. He is a big puncher, he’s won his last few fights by knockout.”
A quick scan of Afinni’s Boxrec confirms his record (18-8-2, 15 KOs), but Ibeabuchi’s response adds more fuel to the confusion surrounding his threatened return to the ring. After all, it’s not the first time the now 52-year-old has claimed a comeback after 26 years of inactivity.
“I ran 10 miles this morning. If I can do this, then I can box,” he interjects, almost telegraphing my next question surrounding the legitimacy of this return. “I have never been this energetic in my life. I train twice a day and it’s not a problem at all. I still believe I am at the very top — nobody ever took me off the top.”
It’s there the penny drops. Ibeabuchi speaks like an active fighter. He’s well and truly under the spell of the fight game and considers himself still in the heavyweight mix, rather than a disgraced veteran who hasn’t seen the inside of a professional ring since the release of Sony’s Playstation 2 around the turn of the century. Instead of a legacy character to unlock, the Nigerian considers himself on the front cover; the reason you would purchase a boxing game. But we know too well that in reality, you don’t play boxing.
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“I want a title shot,” he continues. Pauses between his statements and my responses became longer as I struggle to veer us away from delusion. “I look at the heavyweight picture like this: Myself, [Oleksandr] Usyk and [Moses] Itauma,” he says. “But nobody wants to fight me.
“I have called out [Tyson] Fury multiple times, but he has always said that I need to have a comeback fight first and get a ranking, and then these big fights can happen. So that’s exactly what I am doing.”
At the time of this writing, prizefighting.tv — a company/promotion/streaming service that launched in June, solely for the purpose of Ibeabuchi’s return — is advertising Ibeabuchi vs. Afinni for Saturday, live from Lagos, Nigeria. There is a smattering of stock images on the website, limited information, and everything is directed toward a payment of $29.99 to stream the fight. The “Refunds and Returns” page is empty, apart from a title reading “Coming Soon.”
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Its Instagram and X accounts, which were also set up at a similar time in early June, have six combined followers as of this publication and are persuading you to buy the fight now “before the prices go up.”
Ibeabuchi doesn’t appear aware of this. Why would he? The spurious nature of this whole venture appears disjointed, and leaves more questions than it does give answers.
“I have been sparring,” he continues. He sends over a video of him working on the heavy bag with some loaded left hooks, and points me to the direction of a sparring session with 31-year-old current Nigerian heavyweight Efe Ajagba (20-1-1, 14 KOs). “Sparring is sparring,” he says, still parroting the phrases of an active fighter. “I was on top for most of it,” he claims, “but we were only able to complete four rounds. I wasn’t allowed to go any further.”
That leads to the question of why, and who was looking out for the safety of Ibeabuchi. But delving into the inner workings of his return are met with hostility. “I don’t want to disclose that information,” he says in response to a question regarding his trainer for the fight. It is an “internal matter” that isn’t privy to journalists’ questions. Has he been tested and cleared to fight by a governing body? “That is not a question for a journalist to be asking,” he replies. “It is invasive coming from you.”
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One detail that is present on prizefighting.tv is the badge of the Nigerian Boxing Board of Control, an organization that has been active since 1947. Their secretary general, Remi Aboderin, is more willing to illuminate the processes that have been undertaken for this fight to be scheduled.
“[Ibeabuchi] has been tested and has been cleared to fight,” Aboderin confirms. “MRI, BP, Hepatitis B and HIV.” He then points me the way of the Ajagba spar, almost as if this was part of the criteria for his clearance. He explains that Danny Williams had to pull out of the fight due to an eye injury, and that they were happy with Afinni as a replacement.
I’m then passed over to the “executive in charge of the fight,” Miyen Akiri, who claims that preliminary tests have already been completed, and that Ibeabuchi will undergo further tests by two separate doctors a day before the fight. For a third time, I’m directed toward the video of Ibeabuchi sparring Ajagba.
Further correspondence with Ibeabuchi leads the quinquagenarian to become increasingly impatient. When efforts are made to understand what the past 26 years have looked like for the ’90s star, I’m met with obvious attempts to fast-forward through that period of his life.
In 1997, Ibeabuchi beat the previously unbeaten David Tua for the WBC International title in a fight that launched him into the spotlight of boxing’s heavyweight division. Shortly after this 17th win of his professional career, the problems outside the ring started.
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Ibeabuchi was involved in a disturbing incident where he abducted the 15-year-old son of a former girlfriend and intentionally crashed his car into a concrete pillar on a Texas highway. The boy sustained serious injuries and was left permanently impaired. Ibeabuchi pleaded guilty to false imprisonment and was sentenced to 120 days in jail, also paying a $500,000 civil settlement. Authorities determined the crash was a suicide attempt.
During this time, Ibeabuchi began adopting the persona of “The President,” insisting those around him refer to him by the title. According to former HBO Sports executive Lou DiBella, Ibeabuchi would retreat into this alter ego, often behaving erratically and unpredictably. Promoter Cedric Kushner recounted a dinner meeting where Ibeabuchi drove a carving knife into the table, shouting, “They knew it! The belts belong to me! Why don’t they just give them back?”
In July 1999, three months after his last fight — a fifth-round TKO of Chris Byrd — Ibeabuchi was arrested in Las Vegas after an alleged sexual assault at The Mirage. A 21-year-old escort claimed that Ibeabuchi attacked her after refusing to pay up front. He barricaded himself in a bathroom, and police used pepper spray under the door to extract him.
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The incident led prosecutors to reopen a prior sexual assault case against Ibeabuchi from eight months earlier. While under house arrest, two more similar accusations surfaced, this time from Arizona. Ibeabuchi was deemed mentally unfit to stand trial and was committed to a psychiatric facility, where doctors diagnosed him with bipolar disorder. A judge ordered him to be medicated.
After two and a half years, he was found competent and entered an Alford plea — maintaining innocence while acknowledging sufficient evidence to convict. Ibeabuchi received a sentence of two to 10 years for battery with intent, and three to 20 years for attempted sexual assault, served consecutively.
“A lot of people respected me in prison,” Ibeabuchi claims.
“I was never threatened or anything, and didn’t get into any fights. I wasn’t allowed to. I guess what I learned was that I was a tougher person than I thought and that I can make it in my own way — but above all, I don’t have to solicit prostitution in my life ever again.”
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I ask if he regrets his actions. He replies that “soliciting prostitution was legal in parts of Nevada, but not in Las Vegas or Clark County,” and that he “regretted negligence of the situation but not the morality.”
Further attempts at clarifying some of the finer details of Saturday’s fight date are met by Ibeabuchi ceasing contact and blocking my number.
Two weeks pass, and fight week lands in Lagos, Nigeria. It is confirmed that the Teslim Balogun Stadium will host the bout with a reported local start time of 4 p.m. Nigerian television station TVC News air a short interview with Ibeabuchi where he goes through the motions of answering linear questions.
“I’m glad to be back,” he tells the camera. “To show my home country what I have become despite the absence. I’m so grateful that I can come back to Nigeria and I am thankful for the Nigerian Boxing Board of Control for giving me this opportunity.”
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Ibeabuchi is seen posing with fans outside of Lagos airport. He raises his fist, obliging to one of the sport’s unwritten rituals.
Wilson Aboyehimoe and Tobe Agbakoba, Ibeabuchi’s boxing coach and fitness coach, respectively, are then given short segments to promote their charge. Both Aboyehimoe and Agbakoba sing the praises of Ibeabuchi and are unequivocal in their belief that he returns with a win.
I am assured by a member of the promotional team that the fight is “absolutely happening” and around “3,000 to 5,000 fans” are expected to attend this fight on Saturday, with a high police and army presence to control the crowd.
On Aug. 2, Shigetoshi Kotari, a super featherweight, and Hiromasa Urakawa, a lightweight, died from brain injuries days after competing in separate bouts on the same card at Korakuen Hall in Tokyo.
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Kotari, just 28 years old, went the distance with Yamato Hata in their Oriental and Pacific Boxing Federation title clash, but tragedy struck in the hours that followed. Though he left the ring on his own two feet, the signs were there — his body in protest, his mind slipping. Emergency surgery for a subdural hematoma couldn’t save him. He never made it back.
A day later, another gut punch. Urakawa, also 28, died from the brain trauma suffered in his fight with Yoji Saito. Two fighters, gone inside 48 hours.
These tragedies act as a stark reminder of the brutality of boxing. If mismanaged, ill-advised or exploited, fighters returning to the ring in their 50s — having not taken a professional punch for close to three decades — are rolling the dice on their health.
In his pomp, Ike Ibeabuchi wasn’t simply a rising force — he was the heavyweight division’s unanswered riddle, a storm that promised to rearrange the landscape. He wasn’t some passing boogeyman whispered about in gyms; he looked destined for greatness in boxing’s most merciless division. But “what if” tales have a cruel expiration date. Ibeabuchi was never granted a pause button on that April night when his hand was raised against Chris Byrd. Since then, the shadows have stalked him, the feeling of a looming “Game Over” never far away.
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Ibeabuchi once carried danger like a second skin. Inside the ropes, he was unrelenting; outside them, he left wreckage in his wake. His professional record reads perfect since his 1994 debut, but the lives caught in his orbit tell a different story. In the ’90s, he left a trail of destruction behind him as heavyweights and members of the public were left in heaps on the floor.
Now, in 2025, the only credible opponent left for Ike Ibeabuchi is the man staring back at him in the mirror. The fight has turned inward, and the threat he poses is no longer to the division, but to himself.
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