By Ian Aldous: He missed out on the 2012 and 2016 Olympic Games by a whisker; fortune wasn’t on his side. But now, in 2020, Umar Sadiq is 10-1 as a professional and recently secured the biggest win of his paid career. His British title eliminator win against the then-undefeated, Kody Davies puts the thirty-two year-old within touching distance of the prestigious British championship. The university graduate, born in Nigeria and now living in East London, opened up to me over the phone about his amateur past, his breakout win on BT Sport and life as a boxer in the current social climate.
How the current ‘lockdown’ has affected his daily training routine:
“I can’t train with my coaches and I can’t use a boxing gym, so no sparring. All of that’s been taken out of it, but there’s always something else to work on which is basically what I’m focusing on. I’m still staying fit. I’m one of a very few number of boxers who stays fit – fight or no fight – just because I’ve a commitment to health. For me, with or without boxing, I’ll always be healthy. I’m staying in good shape and eating well, most of the time (laughs). I had so many changes and different experiences growing up. I mean, my childhood was by no means straight-forward. I’ve learnt to just accept where you are and deal with whatever cards you’ve been dealt. We’ve got to be quarantined apart from your one workout a day unless you’re going to buy essentials and I’m just dealing with it.”
The story of being a whisker away from competing at the 2012 and 2016 Olympics:
“In 2012, I went to Nigeria to try to get on their team and I pretty much did. But, I had an injury before I went out there; it was a rib injury. I had a fractured rib, but I didn’t know because the NHS didn’t x-ray for it. (They said) just rest, it’s probably just bruised. Being a fighter – I can deal with a f*cking bruise (laughs)! Then two weeks before the 2012 Olympic qualifiers, I was sparring against the only guy who was contending against me. I had him back to the ropes and I came in to let off some punches and he just let off a punch to say ‘get off me’, and it was his f*cking luck because it happened to be right on the spot where the pain was. I felt it and I carried on anyway. Later on, I went to see the team physio and explained what I’m feeling.”
The X-ray revealed he wasn’t going to the Olympics. A fractured rib has the potential to puncture a lung and he was out. A long wait to take part in Rio 2106 ensued:
“In 2016, I had to beat a couple of guys. The way they do it is you basically have two or three people at the same weight in camp leading to the tournament. In the last two-three weeks, they’ll decide who is going to represent the weight category. You have spars, but they’re not spars because everyone wants to make the team, so you’re actually fighting each other. By the second week I was decided to be the representative as I beat the other guy so conclusively and there was no point dragging it on. They kept him on for me as a sparring partner. I went to the African Olympic Qualifiers in Cameroon. I beat the first guy from Tunisia quite easily. The second guy was from Uganda, but he was in the WSB (World Series of Boxing). So, in 2016 (they) even did this thing where they wanted as many WSB fighters as possible in the Olympics so that they can then argue with nations to say: ‘If you want your fighters to do well in our tournaments – you’ve got to put them in the WSB’. Obviously that’s more money for AIBA, right? I beat this guy, knocked him down and they gave him the decision unanimously. It was f*cking bullshit. I went to the World Olympic Qualifiers in Azerbaijan after and did that with one of my teammates independent of the nation. I beat my first opponent; stopped him in the second round. My second opponent was the competition’s number two seed from Russia. I think he’s maybe hit me once or twice in the whole fight and they still gave it to him.”
AIBA, the regulating body of amateur boxing at the time, has since been stripped by the IOC (International Olympic Committee) of running boxing at the Olympics.
“AIBA lost the licence to commission the Olympics, right? The Olympic Committee were like, ‘you guys are so f*cking bad and the whole world is watching. You’re undermining the entire Olympics’. Boxing was going to get taken off the Olympics for it until another establishment came in.”
It was unfortunate, but it’s all part of Sadiq’s unique story. It was time to turn pro.
In February of this year and in his eleventh pro outing, Sadiq beat Kody Davies with an impressive display in a British super-middleweight title eliminator promoted by Frank Warren. He gave me his thoughts on the fight:
“The only time he had success that wasn’t pre-empted was when he let his hands go for about thirty seconds in the eighth round. My biggest asset is that I’m a thinking fighter and when he started doing that, I was like ‘Oh, this is good; keep going’. You’ll see in the last couple of rounds, I was just dancing around him because he blew his load. All of the success he had was pre-empted in the gameplan. The fight went eighty, maybe ninety per cent to the gameplan.”
“The last fight was a British title-eliminator, so it makes sense that I’m going down a British title route. Fingers crossed – all of this is over and as many people as possible are fine and healthy. Then we can get back on track and hopefully in no time I’ll be challenging for the British title, or should I say winning (the title)!