Category sport-news

The arena was packed on Friday night in the upscale Lekki neighbourhood of Nigeria’s bustling commercial capital, Lagos.

Eighteen fighters from eight African countries were slugging it out before thousands of cheering mixed martial arts (MMA) fans.

It was the ninth instalment of the African Knockout Championship, an MMA fight league that started off in 2020 as a reality television show in Lagos as the Covid-19 lockdown waned in Nigeria.

The formal championship started in May 2023 and has since hosted fighters from 18 countries, the chief operating officer of African Knockout, Ryan Fayad, told AFP.

While football remains king in the west African country, combat sports such as boxing and wrestling have enjoyed moderate success and produced continental and world champions in the past.

Traditional ‘Dambe’ boxing has held audiences spellbound for years, especially in the northern region of the country.

But the exploits of Nigerian-born Israel Adesanya and Kamaru Usman, former UFC middleweight and welterweight champions, respectively, are spurring interest in organised mixed martial arts in the African economic powerhouse.

African Knockout is “driven by the fact that Africa doesn’t have any platform totally oriented for African talent to showcase themselves to the world and progress to reach those international stages,” Fayad, a Lebanese who has lived in Nigeria for 13 years, told AFP.

“The drive behind all this… is to find the next Kamaru Usman and the next Israel Adesanya and promote them all the way to the international stages.”

Fayad said Usman is “totally hands-on” with the championship: apart from speaking publicly about the championship in the past, the former UFC champion has also promoted it on social media.

About five thousand fans watched the last edition held in April in person, and several thousands more streamed the fights online.

 ‘Not about money’

“It’s not about money,” said Jibrin Inuwa Baba, 28, a four-time national kickboxing gold medallist, who is scheduled to fight the winner of Friday’s main event later in August.

The main card of the night is the lightweight faceoff between Jean Do Santos from neighbouring Benin and homeboy Emmanuel Nworie.

“I decided to do this sport because of the love of the sport and love of competition,” Baba told AFP.

He said that while MMA is growing “fast in Nigeria,” there is still plenty of work to be done.

Eighteen fighters — two of them female — are in the octagon on Friday night.

Roughly half of them are Nigerians with fighters from Egypt, Angola, Togo, Burkina Faso and Cameroon also on the card.

Cameroon’s Styve Essono, who defeated Nigeria’s Damilare Abdulrahim, said his victory “will open up a lot of opportunities for me”.

Eighteen-year-old Nigerian Fabian Texas shrugged aside being ill to knock out Egypt’s Mahmud Ibrahim in the second-round.

“We are still coming up, and I feel that we are not there yet,” Baba, who holds a degree in civil engineering, told AFP at the weigh-in for the fighters on Thursday.

Still, the championship has seen a measure of success since it began, with one of its fighters — DR Congo’s Josias Musasa–making his UFC debut in March.

 Good fights

The crowd roared as kicks and punches flew.

A valiant performance by Angola’s Andre Mukisi, who fought on to victory against Togo’s Fred Kudzete, despite being tired, drew one of the biggest rounds of applause.

“The crowd is here for the good fights and not really about home support for Nigerian fighters,” Lois Ogunniyi, a 30-year-old media executive who runs Fist2Fist, a small online community of MMA fans, told AFP.

Despite the growing interest and optimism that the championship will eventually be exported to other African countries, Fayad said the lack of infrastructure and the absence of institutional support are impeding the growth of the sport in Nigeria.

He said getting visas for foreign fighters was always cumbersome, some officials are flown in, and for now, the championship relies on rented spaces to stage fights.

“We are hoping that the government will also help us have access to proper infrastructure,” Fayad said.

“If we had proper infrastructure, people would go to stadiums to watch. So that’s what we are looking for, so it can make our operation easier.”

Shai Gilgeous-Alexander scored 15 of his 35 points in the fourth quarter as the Oklahoma City Thunder rallied for a gritty 111-104 victory over the Indiana Pacers that leveled the NBA Finals at two games apiece on Friday.

Frustrated for much of the game by Indiana’s relentless defense, NBA Most Valuable Player Gilgeous-Alexander found a way to fight through.

He followed a three-pointer with a pull-up jumper to give the Thunder their first lead since the first half with 2:23 remaining.

They wouldn’t trail again. Gilgeous-Alexander, who didn’t get to the free-throw line in the first half, added six free-throws in the final 44 seconds.

“It’s a dog fight,” Gilgeous-Alexander said after another intense, physical battle between the two teams. “Every time you step on the floor, on both ends of the floor they make you work.”

Jalen Williams scored 27 points, Chet Holmgren added 14 points and 15 rebounds and Alex Caruso chipped in with 20 points off the bench for the Thunder.

Pascal Siakam scored 20 points to lead Indiana, adding eight rebounds, five assists and five steals.

Tyrese Haliburton scored 18 points, Obi Toppin added 17 off the bench and the Pacers led by 10 late in the third quarter.

But Oklahoma City — who dropped back-to-back games just twice this season and haven’t lost consecutive games in the playoffs — clamped down defensively in the fourth, determined not to fall in a 3-1 hole.

“We knew it when we woke up this morning — 3-1 is a lot different than 2-2 going back home,” Gilgeous-Alexander said. “We played with desperation to the end the game and that’s why we won.”

Gilgeous-Alexander said the Thunder must “maintain the same desperation” when they host game five on Monday.

The Thunder are seeking their first title since the franchise relocated to Oklahoma City in 2008, having won it all in 1979 as the Seattle SuperSonics.

The Pacers, chasing their first NBA title, struck first in another fast-paced opening quarter in front of their energised fans, making four of their first five shots and building a nine-point lead midway through the opening period.

Oklahoma hit back, putting together a 9-0 run to tie it, but the Pacers — with a strong defensive effort on Gilgeous-Alexander and four steals from Pascal Siakam — emerged from the first period with a 35-34 lead.

The back and forth battle continued in the second, when Oklahoma City led by as many as six but could never pull away and Haliburton converted a three-point play — driving through traffic for a layup and making the free throw, his first of the series — to put Indiana up 60-57 at halftime.

By then, tensions had already ratcheted up. Toppin was assessed a flagrant foul for a check that sent Alex Caruso sprawling under the basket.

Thunder center Isaiah Hartenstein confronted Toppin and both received technical fouls.

‘Unreal’ Gilgeous-Alexander

Oklahoma City’s Luguentz Dort was later assessed a flagrant foul for swiping an arm over Toppin’s head.

Toppin gave Indiana the first double-digit lead of the game with a dunk that put them up 86-76 late in the third.

But the Thunder dug deep, tying it up four times in the fourth quarter before Gilgeous-Alexander came through.

“You’re up seven at home you’ve got to dig in and find a way and we were not able to do it tonight,” Pacers coach Rick Carlisle said. “But give them credit. They kept attacking, kept attacking, and their defense was great down the stretch.”

Oklahoma City closed the game on a 12-1 scoring run, and Gilgeous-Alexander was the driving force.

“He’s unreal,” Thunder coach Mark Daigneault said, although Caruso said nothing Gilgeous-Alexander does surprises him anymore.

David Beckham’s knighthood is the culmination of years of tireless efforts to transcend football and turn himself into a global icon at the “intersection of sport, fashion and business.”

He had long dreamed of becoming a sir and King Charles III made it a reality when he announced his birthday’s honours list on Friday, marking the end of a decades-long journey travelled with his Spice Girl wife Victoria, creator of the eponymous fashion brand.

The honour, one of the highest bestowed by the UK state, “is a powerful symbolic marker”, Marie Agnes Parmentier, professor of marketing at the University of Montreal and author of several papers on “Posh and Becks”, explained to AFP.

It “reinforces his image as a respectable, committed, and, first and foremost, British man,” she added.

READ ALSO: Five Things To Look Out For As Club World Cup Kicks Off

The knighthood could present new opportunities for the 50-year-old former Manchester United and Real Madrid player, “particularly in diplomatic, charitable or political spheres”, said Parmentier.

The former free-kick ace, from a modest East London background, diversified his career after retiring from football in 2013, but success was the result of planning long before he hung up his boots.

“I knew my career was going to end at some point and I wanted to have a career after football,” he said in the documentary series “Beckham”, which aired on Netflix in 2023.

Pioneer

At the height of his football career, Beckham was signing deals with top clothing and beauty brands, building an audience that cut across gender, age and nationality — becoming the first England player to crack the US market.

The successful brand was built on his always immaculate appearance and nearly-always exemplary off-field behaviour, coupled with an unwavering drive to become a pioneer.

This required a certain amount of courage, given that English football in the 1990s was generally the preserve of no-nonsense lads more interested in the pub than the catwalk.

His appearance in a sarong during the 1998 World Cup, revelations that he used make-up, and his eccentric hairstyles were all feverishly gobbled up by the UK’s tabloid press.

Beckham is still capitalising on the fascination, almost 30 years later.

He unveiled his first collection for Hugo Boss in April, is the founder of the Inter Miami football club and the “Studio 99” production company, and has been a UNICEF ambassador for 20 years.

He is now best known not for football, “but for being Beckham, the brand”, said sociologist Ellis Cashmore.

It is a brand worth £500 million ($676 million), according to The Times newspaper’s 2025 ranking.

From Outcast to Hero

The Netflix show exposed the couple to an emerging younger audience, cementing their fame for the foreseeable future.

Beckham “embodies a celebrity at the intersection of sport, fashion, entertainment and business,” explained Parmentier.

The couple’s enduring visibility “is based on a sophisticated media strategy and an ability to embody universal values such as work, family and style,” she added.

But it has been a long and bumpy road, Cashmore pointed out.

In 1998, Beckham was called the most hated man in England after he petulantly kicked out at Argentina’s Diego Simeone during their World Cup round of 16 game.

Beckham was harshly sent off and England lost to their bitter rivals in a penalty shoot-out. Those who had bitten their tongue about his off-field flamboyance gave full vent to their feelings.

National headlines the next day included “10 Heroic Lions, One Stupid Boy” (Daily Mirror) and “You’re Just A Joke Becks” (Daily Mail).

Months of “hell” followed, with death threats, spitting and boos accompanying Beckham wherever he went.

“Wherever I went I got abused, every single day,” he said.

“I find it hard to talk through what I went through because it was so extreme. The whole country hated me.”

But the ordeal only sharpened Beckham’s focus.

A year later, he finished second in the Ballon d’Or as he helped Manchester United claim an unprecedented treble, winning the Champions League, Premier League and FA Cup.

It was often said that Beckham’s career seemed to be scripted by a movie writer, never more so than when the fallen idol took his revenge by scoring the winning goal against perennial rivals Argentina in the 2002 World Cup, redeeming his national hero status.

The royal family were quick to embrace him, inviting Beckham to the weddings of Prince William and Kate Middleton in 2011 and Prince Harry and Meghan Markle in 2018.

Previous rumours of an impending knighthood came to nothing, but his star once again rose in 2022 after the death of Queen Elizabeth II.

While other celebrities came under fire for skipping the queue to view her coffin, Beckham lined up with members of the public for almost 12 hours to pay his respects.

Kevin De Bruyne has signed for Napoli as a free agent after being released by Manchester City, the Serie A champions’ president Aurelio De Laurentiis confirmed on Thursday.

Film mogul De Laurentiis posted a picture of himself shaking hands with De Bruyne on social media with the message “welcome Kevin!”

Belgium midfielder De Bruyne has reportedly signed a two-year deal with an option for a third at Napoli, where he will join up with international teammate Romelu Lukaku and former Manchester United midfielder Scott McTominay.

The 33-year-old left City at the end of this past season after a trophy-packed decade in Manchester, where under Pepe Guardiola he won six Premier League titles and in 2023 the Champions League.

READ ALSO: Man City Sign Midfielder Tijjani Reijnders From AC Milan

He has however suffered from a series of physical problems in recent seasons, with two hamstring injuries causing him to miss significant chunks of the last two campaigns.

Napoli have brought in one of Europe’s top midfielders as the Italians try to bolster a squad which next season will defend the Scudetto while also having the extra fixture pressure of the expanded Champions League.

Antonio Conte’s Napoli beat Inter Milan to the Serie A title on the final day of the season, their second league crown in three years.

But they had no European football clogging up their calendar, unlike Inter who got to the Champions League final only to be thumped 5-0 by Paris Saint-Germain.