Globetrotting Helmand Alekozai didn’t let car accident, tragedy halt boxing dreams

This Saturday, Helmand Alekozai will fight in his seventh country as a professional boxer. The fight, an eight-round junior welterweight bout against Patrick Okine, will take place at the 2300 Arena in Philadelphia, Pa. It’s a remarkable statistic for the 31-year-old globetrotter from Toronto, Canada, who is hoping that exposure in the American market will help him move into title contention. The fight will be the third so far of Alekozai (13-0, 5 knockouts), with additional fights scheduled for September and December. His busy pace – seven fights in the last 20 months following a nearly four year layoff – has him within striking distance of fulfilling his childhood dream of becoming a boxing champion.

“Now it’s more realistic, before it was so far away, I’m 13-0, about to be 14-0 this weekend. I can taste those big fights now. I just gotta do my job, stay humble and never forget where I came from,” said Alekozai.

It isn’t hard for Alekozai to remember where he’s been. All he has to do is look down at the scars from the surgeries on his knee and shoulder, or the scratches across his stomach from the glass in his car’s sunroof, which necessitated two surgeries on a ruptured bladder. It was November 23, 2021 and Alekozai was driving home from work on the Gardiner Expressway in Ontario when he missed his exit. He attempted to turn suddenly on the ice-covered car and lost control of his vehicle. He attempted to counter the spin by accelerating the opposite direction, which exacerbated the situation.

He flew out of the top of the car and suffered a number of career altering injuries, including a tibial plateau fracture in his right leg, three cracked pelvic bones, a fractured scapula and had his head split open. The cuts on his stomach caused a ruptured bladder, and a laparotomy had to be performed to remove glass from his stomach.

Doctors told him he would likely be in the hospital and a rehabilitation facility for two months. Instead, he was out in three weeks.

“There’s not really a reason that I should be alive except for pure luck and a higher purpose, I guess. When I woke up in the hospital it felt unreal like what the hell is this, I didn’t remember nothing. The doctor says it’s very difficult for you to box again normally because of these injuries and they told me it’s gonna be a couple months before you walk properly,” said Alekozai.

“As soon as I got home I had a gym set up in my house already so I got right to training and started moving. I was on a mission to prove everybody wrong.”

Though his discharge from the hospital came sooner than expected, he was far from out of the woods. There were setbacks that tested his resolve, like his injured bladder that had him rushing to the bathroom each time he would take a drink. Alekozai figured he’d be ready to fight again after an eight week camp, but when his knee was unable to hold up for his running regimen, he pulled out of the fight to let his body heal longer. It wasn’t until November of 2022, when a fight against Dylan Rushton was offered to him at the CAA Centre in Brampton, Ontario, that he finally got back into the ring. There were doubts that ran through his mind, even once he got in the ring, but he still managed to win the split decision in front of his hometown fans.

“There was a lot of other things prior to the fight like the athletic commission telling me I couldn’t wear a knee brace which messed me up too because I was scared of my knee popping out but we got past that. I just bit down on my gum shield and let my hands go. I beat Dylan Rushton up pretty bad, it was pretty easy, just letting my hands go and boxing,” said Alekozai.

Alekozai hasn’t wasted a moment since the accident, fighting seven times, winning three by stoppage. New manager Trifon Petrov, who has known Alekozai for years but only recently started working with him formally, says there has been an unexpected impact to his boxing style from the accident.

“What happened to him was actually a blessing in disguise because it helped him change his fighting style. Now he stays much more in the pocket and was able to find more power and is getting a lot more stoppages,” said Petrov, who also manages unbeaten prospects Maliek Montgomery, Elijah Pierce and Thanjhae Teasley

“He’s an exciting fighter, he always comes to fight. I think he’s definitely a name that people should be aware of in the weight division.”

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All Alekozai had ever wanted to be was a fighter. At the age of two, the Afghani-Canadian boy saw fight videos of Mike Tyson and “Prince” Naseem Hamed and decided that was going to be his life and career. He would go around and tell his family members and other kids that he would be a fighter and own a gym of his own. His father, the respected journalist Jan Aqa Alekozai, was against the idea of his son becoming a boxer and instead wanted him to focus on his education.

Instead, he trained in secret, working on his boxing technique from the age of five in his uncle’s basement in the Toronto suburb of Mississauga. His family moved to Prague in the Czech Republic when he was eight years old because of his father’s work. Even while studying at an international school, Alekozai found ways to practice his boxing skills on older kids who were bullying his older brother. One of those fights got him expelled from school, and it was at that point that his parents relented and allowed him to box formally in a gym.

“After that I never got in trouble in school and actually got accepted back into the school I was expelled from to graduate,” said Alekozai.

Alekozai would go on to box approximately 170 times as an amateur, making it on to the “B-team” national squad for the Czech Republic and fighting international duels, but never getting the chance to excel to the maximum of his potential because he was still seen as an outsider to some. When he returned to Canada at age 18, he faced a similar issue, losing split decisions in bouts he felt he dominated because of the impression that he was someone who now belonged to the European scene.

With a boxing identity crisis stymying his progress on two fronts, Alekozai made plans to represent his parents’ native Afghanistan at the 2012 Olympics. All was set for his trip to the qualifiers until his invitation was pulled at the last minute. Alekozai continued to box in Canada but moved back to the Czech Republic in 2015 when his father became ill and died of cancer in 2015. While helping his mother get the family’s estate in order, Alekozai turned pro at the end of 2015 in the Czech Republic, where he fought his first three bouts.

He returned home for a bout in Canada in 2017, and then traveled to London later that year for a decision win over Gyula Tallosi at legendary club venue York Hall. He sat out 2018 and focused on his personal training business, and had a pro fight in China in 2019 to promote a gym he opened up there.

Amid his inactivity, Alekozai also lost his brother, Abaseen, who died in 2021 after a two-year battle with cancer. This added fuel to his drive to succeed.

“That was one fight that I couldn’t fight for him and he ended up unfortunately losing his life. He fought a good two years when they told him he only had a few months to live. This comeback means so much because a lot of people in my family, and my brother who passed away. He wanted me to be a good boxer and get to the top,” said Alekozai.

Since then he has fought twice in Mexico in 2023 and twice in Dubai earlier this year.

Alekozai now turns his attention to Okine (21-7-2, 18 KOs), a 33-year-old native of Ghana who, despite losing three of his last four bouts, represents a step-up in competition for “The Savage Prince,” having fought former IBF featherweight titleholder Lee Selby and title challenger Jeremia Nakathila.

The show will be part of the second event by Swift Promotions, a new outlet headed up by former world champion Danny “Swift” Garcia which will also feature upcoming prospects like Daiyaan Butt, Mathew Castro and Quincey Williams.

“I’ve watched a little tape on him. He looks very slow, he doesn’t look as tall so I’ll have an easier time boxing him on the outside and if I’m on the inside I think I can hurt him. There’s some stuff that he does good, like he loads up with the left hook to the body, I guess he throws the overhand right a lot,” said Alekozai.

“He’s just a fighter, he’ll grind you. You just gotta be respectful and you gotta be prepared. I have seen that he’s vulnerable in places and that’s where I want to expose and take advantage of.”

For this camp, Alekozai prepared nearby at Indio’s Boxing Gym in Bethlehem, Pa. In addition to long-time trainer Glen Erjas of Ontario, Alekozai has enlisted the help of Indio Rodriguez, who will be helping him in future camps in Pennsylvania.

Petrov says Alekozai will have approximately 150 fans coming to the fights in Philadelphia, with some coming from Canada, Europe and the Middle East for the bout. He says the plan is to get Alekozai ranked in the top 15 by most of the sanctioning bodies by the end of the year.

“I’m not looking past Patrick Okine, we’ve gotta win this fight, I live fight to fight, I don’t want to look past anybody because this sport is unforgiving,” said Alekozai.

“I don’t want to lose that ‘0’. I try to kill or be killed.”

Ryan Songalia has written for ESPN, the New York Daily News, Rappler and The Guardian, and is part of the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism Class of 2020. He can be reached at ryansongalia@gmail.com.

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