He has trained some of the biggest celebrities in the world
Former boxer and celebrity trainer Michael Olajide(Image: Eugene Gologursky/WireImage)
Michael Olajide’s Liverpool childhood was far from ordinary, but as an adult he rose to the top of his sport, going on to train some of the biggest celebrities in the world.
Michael was born in Liverpool in 1963 to Michael Olajide Snr, a Nigerian docker working in the city’s shipyards, and his wife Olive, an Irish-Nigerian mum who stayed at home to raise Michael and his siblings, David, Sandra and Tracy.
The 63-year-old told the ECHO: “Right across the street from our house on Botanic Road was a huge park [Wavertree Park]. I remember there used to be dog fights there, there were skinheads there. But it was also a lot of fun, there was a good energy – Liverpool was definitely like this melting pot. You could find everything there.”
Michael now lives in Manhattan with his wife Maryann, with who he shares sons Alessandro, 29 and Kayin Olajide, 27. But he’s never forgotten his Liverpool roots, or the challenges he faced growing up in the city in the 1960s.
He said: “My brother’s got a fighter’s nature. He got the cane on more than one occasion in school. He faced the things that you were going to face when you’re a minority in the social setting that Liverpool was in at that time.
“But, also at the same time, Liverpool was extremely diverse. I remember there was a Pakistani family that was down the street from us, and they faced it [discrimination]. They caught a lot of flak from a lot of the locals.”
Michael and his sister Sandra Olajide in 2009
After years spent working in Liverpool’s docks Michael’s dad was given the opportunity to move his family to Vancouver, Canada, where dockyard and ship workers were in short supply.
Michael was just seven when the family emigrated, and he found starting school in Vancouver to be a challenge. But he admits it wasn’t until years later he understood why he was treated slightly differently.
He said: “I always wondered when I went to school, why people would look at me strangely. I never really understood why until many years later, and I realised that I had kept the Liverpudlian accent. I sounded like no-one that they have ever seen or heard before.”
When his parents divorced the siblings were divided between their mum and dad. Michael and his younger sister Tracy went to live with their mum, Olive and eventually lost touch with their dad.
By the time he left school Michael had developed a fascination with boxing. He said: “I loved fighting. There was something about it. I had this admiration and love for Muhammad Ali, in the 70s, that was just his time, he was just coming back, he was really huge.
Thomas Hearns and Michael, left, fight for the WBO super middleweight title at the Trump Taj Mahal in April 1990(Image: Focus on Sport/Getty Images)
“He was the only person I could really anchor myself to, because at that point, I was living with my mum, I didn’t have that strong male image that I needed to emulate and grow up with.”
It was then he learned his dad, who had previously been an amateur boxer, had set up a boxing gym in another part of Vancouver.
Despite having spent years apart from his father, Michael decided to make the leap and join. He said: “I more or less re-introduced myself to my dad and I started boxing.
“I started in the amateurs, and ended up representing British Columbia, which is a province in Canada. So, I went to the Nationals, I fought some really good, world-rated American amateur boxers.”
At the age of just 23 he had moved to New York, where his career “rocketed”. He said: “I was scheduled to be the next big thing. Sugar Ray was kind of on his way out of the sport, and Mike Tyson was on his way up.
“Madison Square Garden had bought my contract as a fighter and brought me to New York in order to fight at the Garden and fight in Vegas, and my first initial fights were on NBC.”
In October 1987 he was due to take on Olympic gold medallist Frank Tate, but behind the scenes his professional relationship with his dad had started to fracture.
To make matters worse, just a week before the fight Michael sliced open his index finger in a freak accident with a water jug, leaving him needing 20 stitches. Despite the injury he fought regardless, but lost the bout.
Michael lines up with Thomas Hearns and Donald Trump ahead of their title fight at Trump’s hotel in April 1990(Image: MARK CARDWELL/AFP via Getty Images)
One of his biggest fights was against Thomas Hearns for the WBO Super Middleweight Title. Besides Hearns being the biggest name in his weight division, the fight carried extra significance as it marked the first fight held in Donald Trump’s Trump Taj Mahal hotel in Atlantic City.
Michael said: “When you meet him in person, you shake his hand and he looks you in the eye and he’s the kind of guy you would like. What his policies are about, that is another thing altogether.”
He lost the fight on points after 12 rounds, and suffered a devastating injury that would have huge implications on the future of his career. He said: “I had the worst eye injury. I was completely blind in that eye by the time I was finished. But, [the blindness] it was temporary, I could see shadowy outlines of figures.”
Despite an attempted comeback a year later, the eye injury combined with a rib injury brought Michael’s time in the ring to an end.
His professional boxing career may have been over, but it didn’t stop Michael from putting his boxing talents to good use. A chance workout with friends in his apartment set him on the path to developing an exercise program that would be embraced by some of the biggest stars in the music and modelling world.
He said: “I worked with the Rolling Stones, I worked with Mary J. Blige, it was going crazy. Then, Victoria’s Secret asked me if I could train a couple of their models. I trained Adriana Lima and Karolina Kurkova and, and I also trained Iman, David Bowie’s wife.”
And in a full circle moment he got the opportunity to work on the set of the Muhammed Ali movie, training one of the biggest stars of his generation.
He said: “I worked with Will Smith on the Ali movie. It was amazing. He’s really, really gifted, very talented, really focused. He did a great job in portraying Ali. I was more or less like Michael Mann’s [director on Ali] eyes while everything was going on.”