\u201cVOODOO \u2013 you know, the word voodoo,\u201d says Jeamie TKV, when I ask him to spell what he\u2019d just said.<\/p>\n
No, it wasn\u2019t a word that sounded like voodoo. It was voodoo. It\u2019s not a word you tend to hear very often when conducting boxing interviews with blokes from North London. Nor would you expect, when sitting down with the British heavyweight champion, to end up discussing military coups, murder plots and Congolese wrestling.<\/p>\n
Not Congolese voodoo wrestling, anyway.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn Congo, they do voodoo wrestling; it\u2019s a bit different,\u201d says TKV, with more than a dash of understatement. \u201cThey do witchcraft.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn boxing, you have your trainer in your corner; in wrestling, you have a witch doctor. Whoever\u2019s is more powerful wins the fight.\u201d<\/p>\n
But this is wrestling \u2013 it\u2019s not a real fight\u2026 right?<\/p>\n
TKV says it is. Congolese wrestling, he says, is a real sport; a variant of the freestyle amateur wrestling in which he participated when growing up in Tottenham, just with some black magic rituals, trances, chants and spells thrown in.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt sounds like bulls**t, but people believe it,\u201d says TKV. \u201cAnd I\u2019ve seen it happen. It\u2019s crazy, but I\u2019ve seen it. If I tell you half the stuff that happens, you\u2019ll think \u2018this guy\u2019s been watching too many movies\u2019.<\/p>\n
\u201cAll of this, I studied in university. I made a documentary about it, called The Story Behind Voodoo Wrestling. It\u2019s really bad in Africa \u2013 people use it for bad reasons.\u201d<\/p>\n
Like winning fights. Does it happen in boxing, too?<\/p>\n
\u201cMy teammate was doing witchcraft when I boxed [amateur] for Congo,\u201d says the London-born TKV, who holds dual nationality and wore the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) vest in qualifiers for the 2020 Olympics.<\/p>\n
But he doesn\u2019t dabble in the dark arts himself. As a Christian, he prefers the power of prayer.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy dad was very famous in Congo in the late \u201980s for wrestling; wrestling is huge there,\u201d he says. \u201cHe brought a pastor to pray in his corner to counteract the witchcraft.\u201d<\/p>\n
Whoever was in his corner, and whatever the forces at play, Makasi Tshikeva \u2013 father of Jeamie Tshikeva, to give TKV his full surname \u2013 was a wrestler of high enough pedigree to turn pro in the UK and later set up Haringey Wrestling Club.<\/p>\n
Makasi had moved to London, seeking asylum for himself and his family after two generations of persecution from the military and government, in 1991, a year before Jaemie was born.<\/p>\n
And while it was wrestling that occupied TKV\u2019s childhood, it is boxing in which he has now made his name \u2013 and for which the man behind the persecution of his father and grandfather is well known. Mobutu Sese Seko, the then-president of Zaire (now DRC), was the dictator who bankrolled The Rumble In The Jungle in 1974.<\/p>\n
But when he wasn\u2019t helping Don King to bring Muhammad Ali and George Foreman to fight in Kinshasa, Mobutu was notorious for running a totalitarian regime defined by corruption, nepotism and the use of deadly force against threats.<\/p>\n
One such threat was TKV\u2019s grandfather, a Congolese army general who had at one point been a friend and ally of Mobutu, and in 1960 helped him lead the coup that deposed prime minister Patrice Lumumba and eventually put Mobutu in power.<\/p>\n
But the further Andre-Bruno Tshikeva rose through the ranks, the more this concerned Mobutu.<\/p>\n
\u201cMobutu killed my granddad because my grandad helped when the Cubans went into Angola,\u201d says TKV, referring to when, in 1975, Cuba intervened in the Angolan civil war, sending troops to support the communist president against a pro-western opposition coalition.<\/p>\n
Andre-Bruno helped the Angolan forces defend against the Cuban intervention and restore control. His part in the victory impressed the pro-Angola United States, who lined him up to lead the self-declared Republic of Cabinda, an Angolan exclave.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe CIA [which supported Cabindan independence] were so impressed with him, they offered him to be the president when it became a country,\u201d says TKV.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey informed Mobutu about that and he felt my grandad was a threat now, because he\u2019d helped him to overthrow Lumumba. But he couldn\u2019t just get rid of him \u2013 he had to do it in a smart way.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe sent him to protect a base in a town where the French and Belgians and Americans did a lot of business, and then paid rebels to go and kill some civilians, to make my granddad look bad.<\/p>\n
\u201cThen he sent soldiers to arrest my grandad. He said to them: \u2018How can you do this? I put you in this position.\u2019 They said, \u2018Mobutu said we have to.\u2019<\/p>\n
\u201cMy grandad was security for King Baudouin, the King of Belgium. King Baudouin told Mobutu: \u2018I don\u2019t believe General Tshikeva would do that \u2013 if you arrest him, you\u2019re not allowed to kill him.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo, my grandad got sentenced to life in prison, but there were a lot of attempts on his life. He got poisoned several times, and one night someone put a letter under his door saying at such-and-such a time, the doors are gonna open and you can escape. He knew something was off, so he stayed in his cell. When the time came, the doors opened, and all the other prisoners started running, and he just heard the gunshots outside.<\/p>\n
\u201cEventually his sentence was commuted. He did six years and was released, but because he\u2019d been poisoned, he died soon after.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy grandad was a very powerful man. He had 10 wives, multiple houses, a lot of money. But after he died, some family members took everything and didn\u2019t leave nothing to his wives and kids, so my dad ended up going in the army to make ends meet.\u201d<\/p>\n
Dad Makasi Tshikeva became a commando, but once Mobutu learned who he was \u2013 that the son of a man he\u2019d had killed was rising through the military ranks \u2013 he attempted to put an end to him, too.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy dad was invited to a private meal and the chef said, \u2018I\u2019ve been told to poison you.\u2019 So, he took a different plate and when he didn\u2019t die, Mobutu was angry.<\/p>\n
\u201cLater, he was doing a climbing exercise and they loosened the rope he was supposed to climb, so he\u2019d fall. A friend warned him, so he used a different rope.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe knew his life was at risk, and he had just had my elder brother, so he decided to leave and come to the UK.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe was famous in Congo but came here with nothing. He likes to say, \u2018I went from having cleaners to becoming a cleaner.\u2019 He didn\u2019t know no one, didn\u2019t speak the language, and had to find a way to bring his wife and kids over.\u201d<\/p>\n
Once he did so, and had learned to speak English, Makasi resumed his wrestling career.<\/p>\n
No voodoo was involved this time, but he embraced the spectacle and ceremony of professional wrestling under the monicker Big Papa T, winning several regional championships.<\/p>\n
As he did so, he started training young Jeamie in freestyle amateur wrestling, leading to an early introduction to competitive fight sports.<\/p>\n
\u201cAll I knew growing up was wrestling; I grew up competing,\u201d says TKV. \u201cI won the junior world championships in Amsterdam when I was 10. I was too young to enter but my dad put me up as a 12-year-old. I was a national champion, too, and had a four-five-year winning streak in freestyle wrestling.\u201d<\/p>\n
But as he went from boy to man, and a very big man at that, another sport emerged as a more attractive proposition: boxing.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen I was 18, my dad was doing a youth programme, with all the coaches from the area doing their respective sports,\u201d he says. \u201cMy dad was coaching wrestling, but he said \u2018why don\u2019t you give boxing a try?\u2019, and I said \u2018yeah, why not.\u2019<\/p>\n
\u201cThe coach said: \u2018You\u2019re a natural \u2013 you can make millions!\u2019 He made it sound so easy, and there\u2019s no money in freestyle wrestling \u2013 you have to either turn pro or you try MMA.<\/p>\n
\u201cI became addicted to boxing from that day on; from the first session, really. It wasn\u2019t just the [prospect of] money, it was just really good.<\/p>\n
There followed a claimed 72-bout amateur run, including two national titles, five London championships and an African Games silver medal in 2019.<\/p>\n
The coronavirus pandemic delayed his pro career, which didn\u2019t start until March 2022, when he was 28. But the man born Tshikeva, and rebranded TKV \u201cto stand out\u201d, has moved quickly, and last time out \u2013 in November, in just his 11th pro bout \u2013 he was crowned British champion.<\/p>\n
Frazer Clarke, his co-challenger for the vacant title, was favoured to win, but TKV tapped into the psychology of pro wrestling to unsettle the Olympian.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe first presser we did, we were very nice to each other. I gave him a lot of compliments, there was no back and forth; it was very respectful. But then the fight got postponed when I picked up a [rib] injury.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe made a few comments I didn\u2019t like, saying it was a fake injury, so the second presser, I put it on him. I pretended to be upset; I was teasing him, teasing him. From then on, he was upset \u2013 I\u2019d never seen Frazer stick the middle finger up before.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo, I knew when we got into this fight, he\u2019d start off fast \u2013 and I knew he had no stamina. People watching were worried, but when I went back to my corner after the first round, my trainer [Barry Smith] said: \u2018Brilliant! He\u2019s thrown the kitchen sink at you.\u2019 After three rounds, he had nothing left.\u201d<\/p>\n