JEDDAH, 2 February 2007 — As a young boy of 12 boxer Mohammed Al-Salem remembers a pat on the head that triggered a shift in his sport of choice.
The pat on the head from his first boxing coach Egyptian Mohammed Altras “was enough to shift my interest completely to boxing as I got attached to it,” says the 21-year old Al-Salem, 21, from Dammam. “He said my son you will be a great boxer when you grow up! That gave me the energy immediately.” Al-Salem had many different interests. He played football since childhood and was awarded best goalkeeper in his district for juveniles. He was also into handball and enjoys watching basketball but watching Prince Naseem Hamed, former featherweight champion, who is from Yemen and following up with his records as a Muslim and Arab, “made me look forward to be like him one day,” he says. “I do not know how long it will take me, but I want to reach that.” Being popular among his friends and family is a gift as Al-Salem believes and said it keeps helping him improve many steps forward. “Sometimes my mother asks me to stop out of fear, but because she knows how much I love it, she encourages and prays for me always,” he said.
Being the eldest in a brood of 10 — five girls and five boys — he took the difficult responsibility of taking care of the family and this caused him to delay his education. But at the same time, it toughened him and made him mature well beyond his age. “Education will help me a lot that is why I want to finish my studies and then look for a job at the military through a security college,” says Al-Salem who intends to attend even high school night classes after finishing the intermediate level of his education.
A boxing man through and through, Al-Salem maintains a training facility where he trains young boxers. Of his boxing career Al-Salem has so far won 75 local gold medals at the 41kg. and 11 at the 51kg.
At the recent Asian Games, he won one qualification bout in the flyweight class but lost against Sri Lanka boxer Chamila Aberathna in preliminaries 33-21. He said the competition was not an easy task but what mattered to him that he was there to learn from his and his team’s experiences at one of the world huge championships. There he admired the Uzbekistani players’ performance, and said they seemed fit and confident to play even if they did not train which is something not easy to acquire.
Al-Salem wished that more of the good players they have back home had joined them. “Having these experienced boxers like him and like Mohammed Al-Dirazi and Mahir Al-Basri would have boosted our confidence,” he said. But as for Al-Dirazi, who was awarded in 2004 2nd place at 54kg event at the Arab Cup in Egypt, he could not compete due to his injury and Al-Basri, “maybe he got older.”
“My Uncle Ameen used to play athletics and had many medals displayed in his house, I told him I wanted to be like that and make my family proud and he said I’ll support you and he does,” he said. Al-Salem said boxing is not only about strength; it is about the mental focus and flexibility in coming up with new techniques. “Some say it is forbidden in Islam or it is abhorrent due to the injuries it causes that may lead to the death of an opponent. Some even say it cannot be a sport because the intention is to hurt others without having a noble goal. But now as the rules change and boxing soften some consider boxing as the chicken’s way of eating because the injuries are no longer occurring as before so it is more enjoyable and the risks are less.
He learned how to come up with these techniques, through the same coach Altras who had passed his wealth of experience to Al-Salem in 10 years. “In less than two months I was totally confident this is what I want to do and I devoted all my concentration on it,” he said. “Even when there was no one but me I still kept on showing at Al-Noor Club in Tarout Island and was glad the coach was generous as he devoted his time to pass all his methods to me,” he said. “I can never forget him, he was the one who made me a player,” Al- Salem said.
I was also lucky, he said, to have Algerian coach Ibrahim Albajjawi who was a champion too and also Fadel Mubarak who is from the same village in Tarout Island.
Because of his achievements and records at a relatively young age, he received offers from private clubs to train new boxers. “It is a wonderful job. I love to be able to train, coach and meet many players who share the same interest,” he said. It was Al-Salem’s dream to reach the Arabian Championship in Egypt as a first step ahead, and with hard work he managed to do so with a bronze medal to boot in 2005 at the 51kg event. His team’s campaign, however, had to be ended in deference to the death of former Custodian of the two Holy Mosques King Fahd. “We do not regret that because it is the least thing we could do and we look forward to the other upcoming events.”
