On a busy street in the Nigerian city of Lagos, the sound of gloves hitting punch bags mixes with the noise of passing cars.<\/p>\n
Youngsters are taking part in boxing sessions led by local coaches determined to nurture young talent.<\/p>\n
For over a decade, former boxer Yusuf Eleyele has been teaching them not only the sport, but also discipline and resilience.<\/p>\n
He says he started coaching them because he realised that many of the children were homeless or drifting toward the streets and getting into trouble.<\/p>\n
\u201cSome were defiant and rebellious, and some ended up as touts or area boys, fighting and engaging in questionable conduct,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n
He says that when the thought about it, he realised that if they were busy and training boxing, it would \u201cbe useful to them in the future\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cI told myself that since I have the knowledge of boxing, it will help a lot of these kids, and the parents will benefit from all of these.\u201d<\/p>\n
For many of the young athletes, the sessions offer more than just physical training.<\/p>\n
The roadside sessions provide the young boxers an opportunity to hone their talents, establish self-discipline, and pursue goals beyond the streets where they started.<\/p>\n
\u201cSometimes while training, passersby look at us as if we were jobless. But what we are doing here, we have a lot of champions here … all of the training and building of these kids is being done on this street,\u201d says Eleyele.<\/p>\n
His daughter, Fatiya, trains with her father in the road too. He says in 2025, she won boxing gold for Nigeria\u2019s national youth games while representing Niger State.<\/p>\n
“Boxing has helped me to build self-confidence and to remove myself away from danger when harm is coming close to me. So as an amateur boxer, I have won over 10 medals,\u201d says Fatiya.<\/p>\n
But resources are limited.<\/p>\n
Boxing promoter, Folashade Lawal, who is training to become a coach says a lack of funding, equipment, and facilities is holding the young athletes back.<\/p>\n
\u201cGetting a coach and training them is a big challenge for me. It is actually a big challenge because I was not a boxer, I was not a coach, \u2026 I was just like them,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n
\u201cI like the fact that the children are serious and they are doing it well. So, I try to promote them.\u201d<\/p>\n
While the grassroots scene still runs on almost nothing, Lagos has produced boxers who\u2019ve gone on to compete nationally and internationally.<\/p>\n
Here at the informal boxing clubs on the streets of Lagos, youngsters hope their makeshift training grounds will take them there one day too.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"On a busy street in the Nigerian city of Lagos, the sound of gloves hitting punch bags mixes…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":824879,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[571],"tags":[64,63,802,85],"class_list":["post-824878","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-boxing","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-boxing","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/824878","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=824878"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/824878\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/824879"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=824878"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=824878"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=824878"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}