Ricardo Malajika’s journey from growing up in a crime den to fighting on boxing’s biggest stage - TimesLIVE

Ricardo Malajika felt like he was living in a movie while growing up in a crime-den house, but he has the chance to script his own Hollywood-styled glory when he challenges for the World Boxing Council (WBC) title in Tokyo next Sunday.

The 28-year-old, who holds the International Boxing Organisation (IBO) junior-bantamweight title, takes on local favourite Tomoya Tsuboi for the vacant WBC super-flyweight crown.

Victory would thrust him to the pinnacle of a sport that helped keep him on the straight and narrow as a youngster.

Malajika grew up in a house in South Hills, Johannesburg, that he shared with his parents, five brothers and other residents, including car thieves and drug abusers.

His oldest brother, Carlton, fell into drugs, and their father Alex, a self-employed carpenter, didn’t want the other boys being left to their own devices after school. “My dad saw, ‘OK, if the older one can fall into it, it’s easier for us to fall into it as well’.

“His fear was giving us a gap to just go off the rails, so he made sure we were busy. Any spare time we had after school, we’d go to the gym and after gym we were tired, and we’d go back and sleep,” recalled the father of three.

“On Fridays, we had to go to youth meetings, and that would start at 4pm, and we’d come back home around 10pm, and then Saturdays were either tournaments or church functions where we’d evangelise and invite people to church on Sundays.”

Carlton also went clean and was another strict influence on the boys, ensuring they didn’t make his mistake.

Ricardo recalled one morning when the police raided the house. He was taking a bath when armed cops kicked in the door and burst in.

One of the criminal housemates had stolen something. “They tracked it there. It was something very big because there were like helicopters. They kicked the door in and I was in there naked.”

Their guns were trained on the young Ricardo as they asked him in which room he was staying.

The police had already been into the room he shared with his brothers and noticed the boxing posters along with the trophies and certificates they had earned.

Ricardo had won the first of his six South African titles as a young teenager. “When I pointed at our room, they were like, ‘Oh, so you’re the boxer — that means he’s the good guy’, and then they left us.”

Growing up in that house, Ricardo and his brothers used to see stolen cars being brought into the yard and getting stripped for parts. “We watched them strip it; we watched them take the petrol out of the car. It was like a movie.

“Every time I went to school, I always had a story to tell, like: ‘Yo, today [this happened]’ and felt like I was lying,” Ricardo, the fourth of the six brothers, said with a smile.

As he spoke at OR Tambo International Airport before jetting out this week, he admitted he felt like he was in a dream; the WBC’s green belt is the most desired in professional boxing.

Accompanying him to Japan is younger brother Charlton, a stablemate and sparring partner who’ll challenge for the IBO bantamweight title in November.

Charlton, a father of one, recalled times when their father’s work went through lean patches and there was no food on the table. “Sometimes we went to school hungry, went to the gym hungry. But I believe that’s what shaped us, that’s what made us have the discipline because when we think of not having, we’ll do everything and anything to provide for our children now.”

They use their upbringing to motivate each other in the ring. “I’ll tell him it’s always been your dream. I’ll scream it out to him: ‘Look where we come from, look where we are now, this is your time,’ said Charlton.

“When I have to tell him that he’s going to dig deep in the fight. It helps me a lot when I’m fighting when he says: ‘Look, boy, we came a long way and we’re still going very far — this is just the beginning’.”

Ricardo has a record of 17 wins (12 stoppages) and two losses, while 30-year-old Tsuboi, who had a long amateur career, is just 3-0 in the paid ranks, but that includes a stoppage victory over former Mexican world champion Carlos Cuadras.

“We’re going to make history,” vowed trainer Manny Fernandes, who guided Siyakholwa Kuse to the WBC minimumweight title earlier this year. Kuse was scheduled to fight on the same card, but his bout was cancelled.

No South African trainer has had two WBC champions at the same time.

Manager Brian Mitchell, who celebrates the 40th anniversary of his World Boxing Association (WBA) junior-lightweight title victory at Sun City on the day of the fight, is confident too, dismissing Ricardo’s underdog status conferred by the bookmakers.

“He’s the reason I got back into boxing,” added Mitchell, who re-opened a boxing gym to house his stable of fighters.

The tournament will be screened live on SuperSport on September 27 from 10am.