Ricardo Malajika remembers the first time he stepped into the local boxing gym as a wide-eyed seven-year-old in Regents Park on the southern side of Johannesburg.
The smells, the sights, the energy, and the swaying heavy bags left him spellbound.
“I knew then,” he says, just days out from going to work against Jackson Chauke in a local super fight at Emperors Palace for the IBO’s flyweight belt.
Malajika is almost 20 years removed from that day in Regents Park, a smooth, accomplished athlete who ranks among South Africa’s best boxers. His name ought to be on the lips of every South African with even a casual interest in the sport, but because local boxing now exists mainly on the fringes, he remains the focus of interest for only hard core fans who appreciate his talents.
Saturday’s fight at Emperors Palace is compelling because it is the ultimate master-versus-pupil contest. Chauke, a gnarly 39-year-old veteran who keeps bucking the odds, is 13 years Malajika’s senior.
The youngster grew up admiring Chauke, little knowing that they would one day share a ring. What’s more, Manny Fernandes, Malajika’s trainer, was in Chauke’s corner when he transitioned from the amateur to professional ranks in 2008, when Malajika was just 10.
The younger boxer is the IBO’s super flyweight champion, but is dropping down a division to contest Chauke’s title. Despite the mutual admiration, there has been much niggle between the pair in the build-up. Malajika cheekily presented the champion with a baby bottle and receiver blanket, on account of him supposedly behaving like a baby.
Chauke is too old and too wise for such games, but has promised to teach the upstart a lesson.
The likelihood is the pair will produce a rousing tactical battle in the traditions of big local rivalries, not least because Chauke is a proud veteran able to defy his age while Malajika is a super-slick operator who will back his speed and skills against the old dog.
“I’ve never doubted myself,” said “Magic Man” last week, mentioning the trope about hard work beating talent (which he has in loads). “It’s like planting a seed. You water it and watch it grow.”
Growing up in what Malajika calls “the dirty south” with six brothers, five of whom boxed, served as the ideal training ground for a youngster surrounded by squalor and daily hardship in the city’s tough southern suburbs. Malajika learned to scrap for every morsel.
“We’d bliksem each other proper,” he says of growing up among siblings who settled arguments with their fists.
Ricardo emerged as the best of them, although younger Charlton, who boxes on Sunday, is making a good fist of things with six wins in seven professional fights.
“He’s one of my heroes,” says Ricardo, who adds Terence Crawford, the American superstar, to that shortlist. “I believe Charlton will do better than me.”
“If it wasn’t for boxing, I’d have been a gangster,” he admits. Happily, the local church doubled as a gym, so Malajika gained the virtue of exercise amid a spiritual environment.
Even while putting in the work as an amateur boxer, he tried his hand as a fitter and turner. But with bills to pay and a young baby, the R750 per week just didn’t cut it.
He had enjoyed a superb amateur career, winning six SA titles and beating all but 12 of 68 opponents, but in 2018 he opted to turn professional under the watch of Anton Gilmore on a bill promoted by Jeff Ellis, boxing’s most busy man about town.
| The Chauke bout will be Malajika’s first since tragedy almost struck when he knocked out Yanga Sigqibo in 11 rounds last August. The Eastern Cape challenger collapsed afterwards and was rushed to hospital with a bleed on the brain. Happily, he received top medical care and was sitting up in bed smiling when Malajika was among his first visitors. While the champion goes again this weekend, Sigqibo’s career is over. |
Malajika won his first seven fights and looked very much on his way. But then he lost two of his next three narrowly on points, the first of them after switching trainers to Vusi Mtolo.
The defeats might have diminished a lesser fighter, but Malajika dusted himself off and vowed to do better. “The two losses hurt,” he admits. “But they never took me to ground. They taught me to learn . . . it wasn’t the end of the road.”
Three fights later, he was back in the mix. In probably the finest performance of his career, he outpointed useful Kevin Luis Munoz of Argentina in 2023 to claim the IBO’s super flyweight belt.
Gilmore, who was a top professional himself, fondly recalls the early years with Malajika.
“He used to come to my gym for sparring as a 22-year-old. He had earned titles one after the other, and was just a natural. He had what [former pro] Harry Ramogoadi calls ‘spatial intelligence’.
“He was brilliant on his legs, with great movement and angles. I just magnified the essence of it,” Gilmore explained. “He could adjust to everything, he was a natural.”
Gilmore worked the corner for the youngster’s first eight fights. Times were good.
Yet a combination of factors, including Covid, and Gilmore mixing things up and failing to register as a trainer, saw the boxer transition to Brian Mitchell’s stable, the acclaimed former world champion also taking a 12,5 percent stake in him.
Rather than be bitter, Gilmore only marvels at how far his former pupil has travelled. “His wife has a business, they have a nice house and a family. I’m happy about that. Ricardo is special, he isn’t fazed by any fight. Look at his brother Charlton, who fights like Chauke. And Ricardo beats him up six-love.”
Mitchell reckons Malajika is big for super flyweight (or junior bantamweight to some), so moving down a weight for this weekend’s match is a big ask.
“It’s been five years,” he says of their partnership. “This little boy from South Hills has shown unbelievable growth. Anton did a good job with him and he’s now up there with the best. He gets the better of everyone in the gym.”
After a run of fights with Mtolo, Malajika joined Manny Fernandes, who has trained boxers since the mid-1990s. Little troubles Fernandes who has worked with a range of champions, among them Isaac Hlatshwayo, Simon Ramoni, Malcolm Klaassen, Oscar Chauke, Takalani Ndlovu and Kaizer Mabuza.
“I’d known him for many years,” Fernandes recalled last week. “He used to spar with Josh Studdard at my gym. He was very unorthodox, with a good right hand which he never quite threw correctly. He’d slap a bit. When Brian and [promoter] Rodney Berman said I’d be training him, I just went, ‘wow!’
“The first thing I liked were the angles in his game, and he has tremendous footwork.”
Fernandes, now preparing for their third fight together, opted to polish his punching with focus on his uppercut and left hook. It was the same ploy he helped Klaassen with for his upset defeat of Cassius Baloyi 16 years ago.
“I’m not taking anything away from [his repertoire], just improving things. Like his movement, which is unbelievable,. You make them miss, you make them pay. That’s what we work on. We talk boxing a lot, and he listens.”
Another tactic includes sharing video clips of top fighters like Canelo Alvarez and Crawford with a WhatsApp group that includes five of Fernandes’ top fighters. The idea is to show them that what he teaches is practiced by the best.
The trainer reckons Malajika’s ceiling is as high as he wants it to be. He’s naturally big, walking around at about 62kg, and must drop around nine kilograms for the fight. He’ll expect to do so easily.
“I see him going all the way to featherweight, even junior light, and winning titles. He’s that good.”
Assuming he beats Chauke, and the odds are likely to narrowly favour Malajika, he won’t have much time to relax. In May, he has an assignment in Guyana, defending his super flyweight championship, which won’t be on the line this weekend.
Having been a professional for seven years, Malajika is comfortable in his own skin. This weekend’s challenge doesn’t unduly trouble him. It’s a job of work and he’ll get it done.
His way. It’s what fighters do.
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