Jul 27, 2025, 11:51 PM ET<\/p>\n
CAMDEN, N.J. — Dwight Muhammad Qawi, the Hall of Fame fighter who took up boxing in prison and became a two-weight world champion, has died. He was 72.<\/p>\n
Qawi’s sister, Wanda King, said he died Friday following a five-year battle with dementia.<\/p>\n
Born Dwight Braxton in Baltimore, Qawi grew up in Camden. He competed in the boxing program at Rahway State Prison while serving a sentence for armed robbery and turned professional at age 25 soon after his release in 1978.<\/p>\n
In December 1981, Qawi — who legally changed his name in 1982 following his conversion to Islam — stopped Matthew Saad Muhammad in the 10th round to win the WBC light heavyweight belt. Qawi stopped Saad again eight months later, taking six rounds.<\/p>\n
Dwight Muhammad Qawi was a champion at light heavyweight and cruiserweight in the 1980’s and was inducted into the International Boxing Hall of Fame in 2004.\u00a0Anthony Barboza\/Getty Images<\/p>\n
After a loss Michael Spinks, the 5-foot-7 Qawi — called “The Camden Buzzsaw” — moved up in weight and took the WBA cruiserweight title from Piet Crous in July 1985. Qawi lost the title to future heavyweight champion Evander Holyfield in a 15-rounder in July 1986.<\/p>\n
Qawi later fought as a heavyweight, with George Foreman stopping him in seven rounds.<\/p>\n
Qawi retired in 1998 at age 46 with a 41-11-1 record and 25 knockouts. He was inducted into the International Boxing Hall of Fame in 2004.<\/p>\n
After his retirement from the ring, he worked as a boxing trainer, youth advocate and drug and alcohol counselor.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Jul 27, 2025, 11:51 PM ET CAMDEN, N.J. — Dwight Muhammad Qawi, the Hall of Fame fighter who…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":28493,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[447],"tags":[703,49,48,82],"class_list":["post-28492","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-boxing","tag-boxing","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28492","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28492"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28492\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/28493"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28492"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28492"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28492"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}