The tragic tale of ‘boxing’s most dangerous man’: 20 years ago Ike Ibeabuchi was hailed as the next Mike Tyson – but ‘The President’ fell apart amid mental illness, kidnapping, prison and conspiracy theories
Ike Ibeabuchi has spent almost the last 20 years in prison due to a string of convictions
He was once considered one of the next great heavyweight boxers – and he remains unbeaten to this day
But Ibeabuchi suffered with mental illness and his life spiraled out of control, ending in incarceration.
His mother claimed, however, that her son had been the victim of a plot by boxing promoters
The MailOnline recounts his story: Ike Ibeabuchi abducted his estranged girlfriend’s 15-year-old son one night in 1997 and was driving along the Interstate 35 in Austin with him in the car when he decided to ram it into a concrete pillar in an attempt to end it all.
Ibeabuchi was only 24, a heavyweight boxer at the peak of his powers, but who was slowly being consumed by his inner demons. As he was dragged away from the rubble, covered in blood and dust, wide-eyed and delirious, he thought he had ended his nightmare.
It had only been a couple of months since he outgunned David Tua in an epic fight that still boasts the record for most punches thrown in a heavyweight contest (1,730). The win had catapulted him into contention for a world title fight. He had moved one step closer to emulating his hero Mike Tyson.
Ike Ibeabuchi was on the verge of the boxing big time 20 years ago but his life unravelled due to his mental illness.
But that dream would only ever be a carrot dangling in front of him; always close, never in reach.
As it was, the torturous months and years of persistent headaches, hearing voices and seeing demons that followed his victory over the highly-rated Tua would ultimately thwart him from his fulfilling potential.
It drove him to commit a kidnapping on that fateful night in Austin where two lives were altered forever. The boy in the passenger seat of Ibeabuchi’s car suffered severe injuries and would never walk the same again. Ibeabuchi was sentenced to 120 days in jail for false imprisonment and forced to pay $500,000 in a civil settlement.
Ibeabuchi served his time and returned to the ring the following year, picking up two comfortable wins over modest opponents to extend his flawless record to 19-0. On March 20, 1999, Ibeabuchi – despite being a broken man on the inside, tormented daily and converted by his alter-ego ‘The President’ – truly announced himself on the world stage with a spectacular knockout victory over Olympic silver medallist Chris Byrd.
‘I’m ready now, I’m ready for the world heavyweight championship,’ he declared in the ring afterwards. A sea of nodding heads agreed. Few would dispute that he wasn’t. Some even claimed that he would blow away the ageing rulers of the division at the time, Lennox Lewis and Evander Holyfield, that it wouldn’t even be a contest, that he would just need to show up to win a world title. The esteemed Ring magazine even named him as ‘boxing’s most dangerous man’.
This was his 20th successive victory – and most impressive to date – since turning professional, all of which had come in front of an American audience – the place to be as an emerging heavyweight in the 90s. Ibeabuchi, it seemed, was destined to reach the very top in the blue-riband division. But it wasn’t to be.
Instead, it was here, as he had just scaled new heights, that his career slipped away, descended into the darkness and was consigned to the footnotes of heavyweight history.
Nine years previously, Ibeabuchi was just getting ready to embark on his boxing journey. Initially, he had hoped to become a soldier in the Nigerian Defence Academy, but that dream was discarded after spending one night in with his uncle watching ’42/1′ underdog James ‘Buster’ Douglas shake up the boxing world by stopping Mike Tyson in 10 rounds to capture the heavyweight title. He was hooked immediately.
His home was Isuochi, an area of Umunneochi in south-eastern Nigeria. But for Ibeabuchi it was imperative to leave his homeland and travel to America to fulfil his ambition of becoming a professional boxer. He grew up with little to appreciate and decided to leave behind all he had known to travel across the Atlantic as a teenager with his mother, Patricia, who had secured a job as a nurse in Dallas.
Ibeabuchi was dedicated to his craft and would spend most of his days in the boxing gym not far from his home, honing his skills. He was gifted with natural, devastating power and quickly established a fierce reputation, notching up notable victories as an amateur. He won the Golden Gloves in the Dallas and Texas State tournaments in the heavyweight category in 1994 and defeated Duncan Dokiwari, who would go on to be a bronze medallist for Nigeria at the 1996 Atlanta Olympics, before turning over to the paid ranks.
Thousands of miles from home, in a downtown, dingy Louisiana convention hall on October 13, 1994, Ibeabuchi made his professional debut in front of no more than 100 people. He stopped his opponent in two rounds and began his climb to the top.
He racked up 16 wins on the trot before significantly stepping up in class to face New Zealander Tua three years after his first fight. By this point, he was topping the bill in front of 10,000 spectators in California.
The people in attendance got their money’s worth. Ibeabuchi was sensational, impressing with his relentless attacks and come-forward style. The two traded off in a slug-fest that had fans on the edge of their seat and on their feet in applause come the end. Ibeabuchi took a unanimous decision victory. It should have been lift-off from there, but it was the start of his downfall.
He tried to kill himself months after and began to act more and more erratically as time went on. He adopted the nickname ‘The President’ from fans and glorified in that moniker. At times he believed that was his real identity and would insist on people calling him ‘President’. His late promoter Cedric Kushner said: ‘It was his alter ego, where ‘I am The President’ (meant) not of the United States, but maybe president of the world.’
Inside the ring, everything was still going to plan while outside things were falling apart. Ibeabuchi earned himself a position at the front of the queue to challenge for the world title after a brutal stoppage of Byrd in 1999 but would never cash in on that opportunity – or fight again for that matter.
Soon after, he was accused of sexually assaulting a dancer he’d hired from a local escort service to come to his room at a hotel in Las Vegas. The 21-year-old woman told police he had tried to rape her in the closet when she had asked for money up front. When the police arrived, Ibeabuchi had barricaded himself in the bathroom and only came out after officers used pepper spray under the door.
He denied the accusations and was initially released and placed under house arrest to enable him to train and fight pending his trial. Matters were made worse by the reopening of a previous case of sexual assault against him. The incident had occurred eight months earlier at the Treasure Island Hotel and Casino. He was rearrested and remanded in custody after a number of similar allegations came to light in Arizona.
Ibeabuchi was examined by medical experts amid fears of his mental state before proceedings for his hearing. They concluded he was not fit to stand trial on the grounds he suffered from bipolar disorder.
He was transferred to a state-owned medical facility and, with permission of the judge, was medicated by force for eight months. He was later deemed competent to enter a plea and agreed to submit an Alford plea – which in American law means pleading guilty without admitting to committing the crime on the basis that the evidence is unfavourable against the defendant. The judge sentenced Ibeabuchi to two to 10 years for battery with intent to commit crime and three to 20 years for attempted sexual assault, with the sentences to be served consecutively.
The conviction rocked the boxing world, but not more than it did his mother. Ike was all she had and his sentencing left her in bits. She was adamant that he was innocent, however, and insisted he had fallen victim to a wicked conspiracy. She claimed promoters had tapped their phones, broken into their home, put chemicals in all of their food and drink and paid women to come forward with sexual assault allegations against her son.
