The Bukom Banku conundrum

Bukom Banku is more than just a boxer. He is an entertainer and he has been entertaining us for well over a decade. He has done more than entertaining us outside the ring than he has in the ring.

I mean if you recall those proverbs that he created and continuously drummed into our ears anytime he had the opportunity to speak in the media, those were jewels of sayings that one needed enough wits to be able to come up with.

I remember many years ago, I found myself alone in the newsroom shared by Graphic Showbiz, Graphic Sports and the Photography Department. Banku came around to have an interview with the Graphic Sports. There was no sports journalist around and so I decided to interview him and do a story for the paper.

I almost fell off the chair a few times before the interview would be over with the witty one liners while holding a big ball of Banku. Even at that stage of his career, he had enough word power to knock you off, perhaps even more than his fists could do. I did not put that to a test, mind you.

Banku went on to dominate headlines in boxing, showbiz and his personal life for both the right and wrong reasons. Each of his tales, good, bad and ugly brought him into the lime light and he was considered the ultimate entertainer.

He found himself several times in the grip of the law for pummeling his wife or doing something sillier domestically. Each time he would talk his way out of it, and not long after that, he would find himself in a similar situation again and again; like he did recently when he was alleged to have beaten up some supposed lesbians.

Over the years, he made songs and in effect considered himself a hiplife artiste and even boasted to be among the best we have.

Of course he had had the opportunity of performing on stages, not as a boxer, but as a musician. Never mind that most of the songs he boasted about were horrible in the ear, but as far as Banku himself is concerned, no music could be sweeter.

The problem about his failing eyesight and the effect it was likely to have on his boxing career became another national issue. The boxing authority was worried about his eyesight and encouraged him to operate and yet Banku denied. It went on and on and on. Though I don’t know how it ended, I am sure it did hence he could go on and fight.

For a very long time, the obsession with his co-boxer Ayittey Powers raged on. The two always found themselves arguing on the radio about why one should fight the other or why one would never fight the other. That Tom and Jerry argument went on for eons until a smart business man decided to put his money where his mouth was, and arrange a fight for the two.

Powers did not turn up for that fight. I mean he was in the ring, but it would have been better if he wasn’t. Banku almost beat the living daylight out of Powers in what turned out to be a mismatch.

If there is a good outcome, though through that fight, the two became a tad charitable to each other than they were for many years. They even made a joint video to tongue lash Afia Schwarzenegger at one point when she attempted to hurl a Molotov cocktail at them.

Recently the boxer from Bukom has added another worry to the litany Ghanaians have had about him for many years. He has decided to bleach himself and the photos of his new look appearing on social media and other places have had many wagging their tongues.

Even more troubling for those who find this new look opprobrious is the explanation he gives for the bleaching. He says he wants to look like a white man before he takes up his ambassadorial position in Germany should President Mahama win the 2016 election and appoint him. To be an ambassador to Germany, he would have to look like a German. At least his colour should. Bukom Banku logic!

In a recent interview, he announced that he had retired from boxing and would be focusing on politics as he wants to campaign for his “father” John Mahama to win the elections. Is that good or bad? Depends on whether or not you have seen a video in which he took off his clothes as part of the campaigning.

For more than a decade Braimah Kamoko or Bukom Banku or Banku Flesh, as he wants to be called from now on, has been a part of our entertainment culture. He says the darndest things and he pulls the silliest acts you can imagine.

He has become our cross. He is the conundrum we can never find a way to unravel. We are saddled with him till eternity. Unfortunately for us, there is nothing we can do to change the situation. The media loves such characters and so we have to keep quiet and enjoy the enigma that is Bukom Banku.

RIP MUHAMMAD ALI

Another boxer who made the news this week was the legendary Muhammad Ali who passed away last Saturday and will be laid to rest this Friday in Louisville. I share with you below what I wrote on my Facebook wall about Ali and how I got to know him through the magic of television.

One of the greatest television periods this country has known must be in the 1990s when The Legendary Fights were on. We could not wait for the long one week cycle to complete for the legendary Moses Foh-Amoaning to present his legendary show, The Legendary Fights.

That weekly show on GBC TV, hosted by Moses and sponsored by Providence Insurance was all our young curious boxing minds look forward to.

This show introduced us to the greatest boxers of all time. We got to know about great men like Rocky Marciano, who for me was the greatest heavyweight in the history of the game pound for pound, Jessie Joe Walcott, Sonny Liston, George Foreman, Joe Fraser, Sugar Ray Leonard and many more besides the greatest boxer of all time Cassius Clay or Muhammad Ali.

In terms of power boxing, Ali could never have stood in the ring against Marciano. Heck, I even think he could never have out-boxed his contemporaries Fraser or Foreman amano amano. But Ali had something other boxers didn't have and the reason he was so successful at this game. He had the X factor, he had the panache and the suaveness that you need to be great. He was more than just a boxer.

The way Ali knocked out the beast, at the time that was Sonny Liston, is one of the greatest moments in boxing, besides the world famous Rumble in the Jungle (that was the fight between Mohammed Ali and George Foreman in the then Zaire and now DR Congo in 1974. Ali won that fight by knocking out Foreman in the eight round). Time stood still and the world was in shock at the feat attained by the young man who had just beaten Liston, the one man who was not supposed to be beaten by anyone.

Ali wasn't a great boxer because he could only do the job in the ring, he was-because he could also beat you many times before you enter the ring and still beat you after the fight was over. He transcended boxing. He made the sport so lovable his daughter even became a boxer.

Ali just didn't box, he also was out there challenging social behaviours and restrictions that were, in his view, wrong. He was a black activist and insisted on the black man getting his due in a very racial society. He fought against being drafted to Vietnam because he did not believe in the cause for which America was engaged in that war.

Thanks to Moses Foh-Amoaning and his Legendary Fights we got very up close to this great boxer, African, American and man who passed on to the next world last night. We saw many of the fights Ali was engaged in that you can now watch on YouTube thanks to him.

#RIPMuhammadAli, the greatest of them all!!!