‘King’ refuses to beg for a living
The ABU South champ works as a taxi driver
When he’s not in a boxing ring, recently crowned African Boxing Union (ABU) South bantamweight champion Ronald “King” Malindi is a taxi driver.
The 22-year-old ferries passengers from the Helen Joseph Rank (next to the famed hospital) to Joburg CBD.
This is in the close vicinity of Westbury where his trainer Bernie Pailman has his Westside Boxing Academy.
“I cannot wait until I get a fight because I need to put food on the table. You do not know exactly when will you get your next fight, so I really cannot wait until that time comes. I cannot be a burden to my father.
“I am a man and I must live and behave like a man,” said the lanky boxer from Venda but based in Brixton where his father Johannes has a house.
Malindi’s mother Nomvula lives in Ennerdale, south of Johannesburg.
“People [passengers] do not [recognise] me and I go along with the job nicely,” said Malindi, who is expecting his first child in September. He works five days a week but he does not get “paid a cent”.
“The arrangement is that I work four days for the boss and the fifth day’s taking is mine. I am very happy with the arrangement,” he said.
He said fellow taxi drivers know that he is a professional boxer. “They attend my fights. Even taxi owners, especially those who know my trainer, also attend my fights and I appreciate their support.”
The boxer said he also gets on well with his passengers although some of them can be very difficult.
“I have never been involved in a physical confrontation with any passenger and I hope it stays the same,” said Malindi who quit school when he was doing matric in 2013.
“There was a serious misunderstanding between me and the school principal. He used to beat me up with bare hands and already I was an amateur boxer who knew how to defend himself, but I kept my composure until I got tired of being his punching bag. So I hit him back,” he chuckled.
Malindi said he won 293 of his 300 amateur fights before he turned professional in 2013.
He represented South Africa at regional and continental championships in Angola and Zambia a few years ago.
He was a reserve at the Zone 4 Championships in Angola in 2012 and he claimed silver in Zambia in the Africa Championships later that year.
“I gained enough ring experience. I just needed to work on my temper,” said Malindi, adding that Phillip “Time Bomb” Ndou and Floyd “Money” Mayweather have inspired him to box.
“Boxing is not just a sport for me but rather a job. So I have to do well while limbs still allow me to and quit when I feel I can no longer do what I did when I was young. Winning the ABU title is just the beginning, a lot is still to come,” he said, driving away as he blared the hooter of his Quantum taxi.
I cannot wait until I get a fight because I need to put food on the table. I must behave like a man. Ronald “King” Malindi ABU SOUTH CHAMPION