Free Jarred wants ring wars and peace
● Fresh out of prison, boxer Jarred Silverman is eager to get back to his fighting ways in the ring, while preaching peace and forgiveness outside it.
The 30-year-old wants to apologise to the man he shot and wounded in 2014, trying to arrange it through his parole officer.
Silverman’s desire for street-fighting, almost a custom in the south of Johannesburg where he grew up, ended badly when he was shot five times after shooting a man he believed was going to attack him.
After undergoing multiple surgeries over two-and-a-half years — the first seven months were in intensive care, during which he said he flatlined on three occasions — Silverman was convicted of attempted murder and sentence to five years in prison.
“I can’t believe I’m sitting in a chair,” Silverman said in an interview at Colin Nathan’s Hot Box gym. “Five weeks ago I was sitting on a bucket [in prison].”
Silverman spent more than two-and-a-half years in jail, 15 months in Boksburg and 16 in Leeuwkop, where he ran a boxing programme for inmates, sponsoring bags and gloves at both institutions. “It was to help inmates,” he said.
“There’s so many drugs, so many stabbings. I saw four people die while I was in prison, bleeding out. Gang violence ...”
Silverman, who describes himself as a people person, made friends inside, including some senior members of the number gangs. “I had one fight in prison, in Boksburg. I had a guy who was threatening me when I first came, he was trying to extort money from me and he was threatening to stab me so I ended up knocking him out. “I stuck to myself, I helped where I could.” The hardest part, however, was not seeing son Steele, now three, for two years. The Covid19 pandemic meant visits by wife Shakira were behind glass, and his son wasn’t allowed in at all.
Silverman walked into prison in August 2019 when Steele was three months old. “I can take being hit, I can take being stabbed, but let me tell you, the worst pain I ever felt was not being able to see my son. It broke me. I cried many nights for my son.”
Prison life was hard enough; the food was awful and the cell was overcrowded. “You’re talking about 80 inmates in one cell. One bathroom, one shower, one toilet.
“None of the showers work — you’ve got to pour the kettle into the bucket. Both prisons.”
Silverman is also keen to get counselling to help him process the past several years and overcome aggression that started as a kid.
The shooting was a result of a fight over a girlfriend — he knocked out a guy who returned with reinforcements and beat Silverman unconscious. When he spotted the bulk of that group at a music festival several months later he shot one in the shoulder.
An off-duty police reservist shot Silverman from behind. “I walked into hospital holding my intestines,” he recalled.
“The artery going to my heart was sticking out my chest like a piece of calamari. A nurse in casualty fainted when she saw me.”
A major influence in Silverman turning his life around was the late Lionel Hunter, himself a streetfighter before he found religion. “Without him I’d probably be dead by now. I had an arrogant attitude. The one thing Lionel taught me is that you reach a crossroads, between revenge and forgiveness.”
Hunter, who baptised Silverman, died while the boxer was in prison, but their bond continues on the outside. Silverman is working for Hunter’s brother Kevin selling short-term insurance and his promoter, Hunter’s widow Shereen, has secured his boxing licence. He even has a supplements sponsor.
Silverman has a record of 10 wins and four defeats since he turned professional at the age of 16, when he was a KES pupil catching taxis to the gym.
“I screwed up my career. I got shot when I was 21 — I had just signed a contract for the SA welterweight title. The shooting set me back, prison set me back.”
In his new life he wants to make things right with the man he shot. “I want to tell him I’ve done my time and whatever happened between us is over.”
And Silverman wants to get back in the ring. “My story will never be complete until I win a title.”