But worse was what his eyes could not see and his mind refused to register: the injuries he suffered during his last fight, a bloody 12-round world title match against a junior-bantamweight champion named Robert Quiroga.
In the view of virtually everyone but Anifowoshe himself, the injuries have all but ended a promising future for a young Nigerian immigrant and former Olympic hopeful who saw a chance to make a life for himself as a boxer in Las Vegas. Only the fighter does not see his career as being over. In spite of damage he suffered a month ago, he insists, incredibly, that he will fight again.
What was one man's calamity and burden soon became fodder for the continuing debate over boxing. In the weeks that followed, Kid Akeem's injuries raised questions about the wisdom of the use by smaller men of six-ounce gloves in title matches, as he and Quiroga had done, rather than the more heavily padded eight-ounce gloves Anifowoshe wore in his 23 previous fights, all victories, 18 by knockout.
The damage that night was not one-sided. Spindly though he is at 115 pounds, Anifowoshe has always been a heavy puncher, and he showed that against Quiroga. By the end of the fight, Quiroga's face was bloody and swollen, and more than a few people at ringside later said that had the bout not occurred on Quiroga's home turf it might well have been stopped and Anifowoshe awarded the victory. At the final bell, Quiroga looked far worse than the loser, who was virtually unmarked and had finished strong in the 12th round.
Even as a comatose Anifowoshe was being treated in the intensive care unit of the Baptist Medical Center in San Antonio, Quiroga was in the emergency room getting stitches for cuts on his chin, left brow and eyelid.
Hardly was he out of the hospital when Quiroga was saying the I.B.F. should outlaw the use of six-ounce gloves, a clear enough admission that his victory had not been easy.
Anifowoshe remained in the hospital until July 4. That was the day when, against doctor's advice, the fighter's wife, Sharon, took her husband back to Las Vegas, where he was reunited with his two sons, Akeem Jr., 3 years old, and Kazeem, 1 1/2. The family lives in a modest two-bedroom apartment on Steelhead Lane.
But Anifowoshe sees his injuries as simply a temporary setback in reaching his objective, a world title. "Believe me, I will fight again," Anifowoshe said as he lay in bed days ago. "Everything is on me."
For Anifowoshe, the odyssey that brought him to the brink of that dreamed-of title began in Lagos, Nigeria.
He grew up there in a family of nine children. His father, Ashru, was a truck driver; his mother, Nimota, ran a bar.
Anifowoshe's introduction to boxing had a comic undercurrent. It was only after his sister beat him up that an older brother, Dada, took him to the gym so he could learn to defend himself. But Anifowoshe, who was 9 then, was more interested in street life and it wasn't long before he stopped going to the gym. By 12, he said, he was smoking "weed" and loitering at a bus station, where he became deft at picking pockets.
He was 14 when he snatched a purse from the wrong woman. She pummeled him so badly that he returned to the gym and began boxing again. This time, he stuck with the sport and began to win local and national competitions.
In 1984, he was a member of the Nigerian Olympic team. In Los Angeles, site of the Games, he filled out a form, and where he was asked to list his age, he wrote, truthfully, that he was 15, too young for competition. He was declared ineligible.
But rather than return to Nigeria, he decided to stay on in the States and shoot for the 1988 Games. He settled in with Doc Broadus, a coach who had met him in a pre-Olympic training camp for fighters from African nations.
Broadus, who discovered George Foreman in the Job Corps in the mid-1960's, lived in Las Vegas. When Anifowoshe arrived here, it was nighttime, and the city was lighted with neon.
By daylight, he discovered that life in the desert was not so glamorous. He had no car and was constantly short of money. Even so, he routinely lent money to others, particularly fellow Africans, and while living with Broadus and, later on his own, he allowed those without shelter to stay with him, rent-free.
In May 1986 he fought in the world amateur championships in Reno, and felt so victimized by the judges' decision in a quarterfinals bout against a Soviet boxer, Yuri Alexandrov, that he sobbed uncontrollably afterward. "My life, my life," he said, through tears. "I've been training every day. I haven't missed. My God."
The disappointment led him to abandon his Olympic ambitions and instead turn professional in January 1987.
Anifowoshe fought nearly every other month, earning purses ranging from $350 to $600 in bouts arranged to accommodate his senior-year curriculum at Rancho High School. "I was a straight-A student," he said. "Nobody likes school, but anything I do I like to do best."
That dedication extended to boxing.
"He was always asking for more sparring," said Miguel Diaz, his trainer. " 'Let me go one more round,' he'd say. He wasn't afraid of work. And he was very respectful. Never talk back to nobody. Always, 'Thank you.' He was a kid from another generation."
In May 1988, Sharon and Akeem were married at a time when his purses were rarely better than $1,000 a fight, hardly enough for him to support a family. But Baxter figured he had a potential champion in Anifowoshe and was helping to support the fighter, paying his rent and providing him with spending money.
His objective was identical to his fighter's: a world title that would be an open-sesame to the serious money that boxers can make. In fighting Quiroga, Anifowoshe would earn a modest world championship purse of $15,000, still more than double his previous best payday of $7,000.
A glimpse of what might lie ahead if he won was provided by a delegate from the Nigerian President, who in the pre-fight dressing room envisoned Anifowoshe making his first title defense in his native land in an outdoor stadium filled with 50,000 to 60,000 of his countrymen.
Then Nnamdi Moweta, a friend and fight manager who, like Anifowoshe, was from Lagos, began rousing him by telling him in tribal tongue, "You are the lion."
A little more than three weeks later, he lay in bed, a wounded man trying not to let go of a dream.
(By Phil Berger, New York times : July 14, 1991)
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Kid Akeem never boxed in the United States again. There are reports that he turned to drug trafficking and was deported back to Nigeria, where he picked up boxing again after a while. Reports vary on exactly how he died in 1994, some say he had boxed in an ill-advised professional match in Nigeria and collapsed in the shower afterward.
On 16 August 2004, Richard Merla, then a member of the Bandidos Motorcycle Club, was playing cards with Robert Quiroga when a dispute arose concerning a Scarface poster that Merla had taken from one of Quiroga's friends. Merla stabbed Quiroga later that night and Quiroga subsequently died on the scene. Afterwards the Bandidos member, was convicted of the murder and received a sentence of 40 years in prison. The Bandidos released an official statement that the former member (Richard Merla) had acted alone and without the consent or knowledge of the club, and he was expelled as a member.
The Robert Quiroga vs Kid Akeem bout was the Ring Magazine Fight of the Year 1991.
