A Fighting Spirit
Co-Founder of the Round 10 Boxing Club, Ahmed Seddiqi is on a mission to champion the spirit of boxing in the Middle East
Can you tell us about the boxing gym you opened? It’s going very well. I left my family business four years ago and refocused my entire time on it. So, the gym overall is doing well. As a gym we have been producing a lot of fighters from this region as well.
In terms of homegrown UAE athletes, what proportion do they make up? We have a few locals, two who will be fighting specifically for this upcoming fight are Sultan Al Nuaimi and Fahad Al Bloushi, both professional boxers.
It must be very rewarding when you see homegrown talent climb to a professional level? It’s extremely rewarding because firstly, the Emirati population is very small and to find a boxer is quite a task, as it is a less common sport here. Arabs have always been warriors. When we delve into the history and my dream was to make Arabs stars in the boxing world as well.
Is the strategy to groom and grow as many professionals as possible or are you also looking at the amateur side of things with a view on the Olympics and people representing the UAE? We are supporting the UAE government and the UAE Boxing Federation to do exactly that.
Sultan Al Nuaimi, the boxer who’s fighting on the undercard, he also fights for the amateurs and he fought in the Asian Champion Amateur Championship that happened a few months ago here and he did quite well. He fought against the top ten fighters in the world, in his weight class and personally a lot of people saw him winning, but unfortunately, he didn’t get the win. However, our focus is more on the professionals and the professional side of the sport.
The next event is a big promotion with a national global television audience watching it, is this the way you see the business going forward? Are you the new Middle East - Eddie Hearn? I wouldn’t say Eddie Hearn, as those people have been in the business for a long time, so I can’t even compare myself to them, but we’re doing quite big things for our side of the world. In April we had a big world title fight at Dubai’s Caesar’s Palace. Even when it was at a time when restrictions were there, we still went ahead with that and we had a lot of fights that were happening, but this is a bit more special to me personally because first it was going to be a world title for this event, but eventually it had to be called off. It’s now Asian WBC and our Dubai based fighter is heading that show, which is indeed a very big achievement for us as promoters here in Dubai to have that. Congratulations, and obviously having the support of a brand like Hublot is no bad thing, correct? Yes, of course. Hublot being abroad has helped us a lot in the past. As you know, it’s a family business and they’re supporting us too. Then you have our other sponsors Kinetik, they do oil lubricants and have been supporting us from the beginning, too. So, that’s increasing as well, as finding sponsors has always been challenging because they say boxing’s not important here, but it’s big now. The activities are growing, and the attention is growing, for us here in the UAE. We want to bring the international fighters to the region and on the flip side we also want to produce our own local fighters. On the main ESPN show, out of the five fights there will be three locally based, which is Hasibullah Ahmadi from Afghanistan and Faizan Anwar from India, who’s a very talented young boxer. Then you have a Jordanian boxer, who’s quite talented and has a solid amateur background.
What do the next 10-20 years look like for the sport in the region? To have world title events hosted here in Dubai with UAEbased fighters, those who grew up here, started their careers here and trained here – this is the goal.