He's still dreamin' on, I'm sad to report... Yet another comeback attempt today in Hamburg, Germany. He is taking on 24-2-1 Dominican-German light middleweight Rafael "Karibik Tiger" Bejeran, coming off a whitewash loss sixteen months ago to Polish middleweight prospect Kamil Szeremata, now 16-0. A week from Tuesday he will celebrate his 39th birthday. I don't like that he's still boxing. Ouma had to overcome so much in his life that you don't want to see him degenerate the way so many have before him in this unforgiving sport, taking flush head shots for pay well past his ability to fight back in a meaningful way. Already four years ago he was displaying signs of being very badly shot, when he got a gift over Rahman Mustafa Yusubov (read the sad tale here: https://www.boxingforum24.com/threa...im-ouma-vs-rahman-mustafa-yusubov-rbr.495010/) in his first return to action since the frightening TKO10 finish to his courageous but doomed effort 2½ years earlier versus a freshly primed-out Golovkin. The good news is that Bejeran isn't a puncher, but I'm glued to my Twitter feed with breath nervously baited, half expecting to read something like "Ouma has been rushed to a hospital after getting brutally kayoed following a prolonged beating..."
Article from Bild.de from last Wednesday: His life, his story, is a wild madness ride between nightmare, horror, success and defeat. Ex-boxing world champion Kassim "The Dream" Ouma (38) boxed in the biggest arena in the world. In New York's Madison Square Garden, at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas. On Sunday he makes his comeback at the Hamburger Kiez in the disco "Große Freiheit". Fighting - Ouma always had. Often enough for his life. And not to break life. In 1978, he was born Julius Ouma in Uganda in Magamaga, a three-hour drive from the capital Kampala. The seventh of 13 children. In 1984, he was kidnapped by the National Resistance Army, dumped in a garbage truck with dozens of other boys, and taken to the jungle. Ouma: "They said to us that we no longer have a mother or father. Who weeps, be dead. " This content is protected Kidnapped from school and trained as a child soldier: Kassim OumaPhoto: Private He gets his Muslim name "Kassim", is trained to be a child soldier. As a 7-year-old he has to shoot a school buddy who had lost his ammunition. Ouma: "Command was command. Otherwise we would both have been killed. " For twelve years he served in the rebel troupe of today's President Yoweri Museveni. How many people he killed and tortured, he has forgotten.Drugs helped him dislodge horror pictures (he sat smoking on a pile of corpses). In 1996, he boxed for the military club "Bombers", to the Olympic Games.However, the money is missing. In 1998, he gets a visa for the military World Cup in San Antonio / Texas, gets coal for a flight ticket, set off - to freedom. In Washington, he applies for political asylum. He distributes pizza flyers, lives on food leftovers of the restaurant guests: "I then cycled through the boxing gyms by bicycle." He has talent, he becomes a pro and he blows the first seven opponents. In 2002, he becomes US champion in the Superwelter, survives a serious car accident and collects two belly shots in Florida when a restaurant is raided. In 2004, "The Dream" becomes IBF World Champion at Caesars Palace / Las Vegas. 2005, the title is gone again. This content is protected In Las Vegas, Kassim Ouma (l.) Beats his opponent Verno Phillips, becomes IBF World Champion in Super Welterweight.Photo: Getty Images Sport / Getty Images After all: He is allowed to safely visit Uganda, is officially released from the army. Because he once deserted, military henchmen have killed his father in revenge.Kassim blames himself. He makes 16 fights, only half wins. In 2015 he returns to Uganda. "But there, the government still hates me," says Ouma. He escapes again, arrives in Munich on a plane to Berlin, lives in a refugee home. He dreams of the last chance. Ouma: "Tobias Drews helped me to find a gym here. He commented on my World Cup fight on TV back then. " This content is protected Trained for free in Munich boxing by Nick Trachte (l.): Kassim "The Dream" OumaPhoto: Tomaso Pagnamenta Ouma trains in boxing by Nick Trachte. He is one of the many refugees who do sports for free there. But he wants to return to the World Cup throne, makes in the "Great Freedom" Sunday the first small step. "The dream is on," he says. The dream continues ...
Some might remember this guy as the first in a long line of people to expose the still undefeated Gennady Gennadyevich Golovkin.
That's one spin to put on it; some might say it was a teachable moment & critical piece of GGG's development.
Golovkin beat the hell out of Ouma...........................Ouma has taken way too many punches for his health, he is taking a change by fighting all those years...................he should fight some easy fights for money and then retire..............
Some people might remember this guy as one in a long line of people that Golovkin put in hospital and ruined the career of.
Ouma lost via UD8 to Moroccan-German prospect Ilias "The Assassin" Essaoudi, who improves his record to now 12-0 (9) and has punched his ticket for a crack at Bejeran in April 2018 challenging for the Caribbean's WBF middleweight world and/or his WBO European title. Ouma was reported to be penciled in against Bejeran yesterday, with some apparent confusion or back-and-forth regarding the matchmaking before it was ultimately determined last-minute that Ouma fought Essaoudi for the privilege of meeting Bejeran next spring (while Bejeran himself KO1ed a Hungarian in a tuneup 6-rounder). This carried the implication that if Kassim weren't able to clear this hurdle and generate some momentum heading into a guaranteed match for a prize (albeit fairly low grade) he might call it a day. Hopefully we get a retirement announcement soon.
The good jews is the scores represent the standard boxing scorecard arithmetic (ie sans point deductions or knockdowns) so at least we know Ouma wasn't getting his skull dribbled off the canvas all night. A couple of the judges actually had it fairly close, leading one to wonder if Ouma is parting on a note of bitter regret feeling he maybe deserved that one...
What a hard start to life. I hope he can make a few quid and retire soon ! You could easily make a film about his life its that harsh !
He was the subject of one of the most intense boxing documentaries I've ever seen, which IntentionalButt referenced above. The first half of that film contains a good deal of grim testimony re. Ouma's road to young adulthood, but the second half, with Ouma returning to his homeland and visiting his father's grave, makes it look like a teddy bears' picnic.
