CLAUDE:
You’re listening to Limitless Africa, the podcast that looks at how Africa and America can work together for shared prosperity. It’s sponsored by the US Department of State and the Seenfire Foundation.
You’re listening to limitless Africa, the podcast that looks at how Africa and America can work together for shared prosperity. It’s sponsored by the US Department of State and the Seenfire Foundation.
On Limitless Africa today, we have an interview with Maxwell Kalu, the Nigerian entrepreneur who’s trying to build the world’s next UFC.
DIMPHO:
The African Warriors Fighting Championship takes the ancient combat sport of Dambe global.
CLAUDE:
Will the next Hulk Hogan or the next The Rock come from our African continent?
DIMPHO:
To find out, our reporter Fleur Macdonald spoke to Maxwell Kalu.
FLEUR:
Hi, Maxwell. Welcome to Limitless Africa.
So first off, could you introduce yourself, please?
MAXWELL KALU:
Yes, I am Maxwell Kalu. I’m the founder, CEO of the African Warriors Fighting Championship. African Warriors, put very simply, we are building Africa’s UFC, the largest combat sports platform on the continent.
Primarily now we promote Dambe, which is indigenous traditional boxing native to Nigeria.
FLEUR:
Tell me about Dambe. Describe it to me. Make me live it please.
MAXWELL:
Okay, so Dambe is a very unique sport. There’s nothing quite like it.
I primarily I come into this as a fan before anything else.
I have been a a massive combat sports fan my entire life. and When I was looking at launching African warriors about 2018, initially, it was going to be an MMA organization.
So we were going to do and MMA in the same way the UFC or any other organization does it. But it was going to be a Nigerian organization because I feel that the opportunity for a Nigerian combat sports opportunity organization was, you know, something to be excited about.
And I got to Nigeria, I’m going around understanding the landscape. And it was actually an Uber driver who got us to where we are in that. He had been taking me around to see different parts of the Nigerian combat sports scene.
And he turned to and he said, oh, you like this fighting stuff, right? said, yes. said, okay, I’m going to show you something you need to see. And he took me to a part of Lagos that he probably wouldn’t want to visit. And we get there and this is where I see Dambe for the first time. And I’m instantly just blown away. The sport in itself is so steeped in culture, tradition and so much around it that it’s more than just the sport you’re watching. So I get there and there’s these musicians playing these songs, hitting the drums.
The fighters are in this almost like trance-like state before they can compete. And then they actually start fighting and they’re swinging these huge haymakers. One hand is wrapped in rope, one hand is unwrapped.
And it just instantly hit me, this needed to be it. this needed to be the the sport that we built this organization around. So, Dambe is a sport: its origins come from spear and shield warfare. So this is how ancient warriors used to prepare for battle.
So in Dambe, primary hand for for striking or the offensive weapon is your hand, which is wrapped in rope. That’s called the spear.
And then the unwrapped hand is used for blocking and gauging distance. That’s called the shield. And then the goal is knockdown or knocking out your opponent, which is called a kill. So, so much of the language of Dambe comes from its history and its association with warfare.
And then what happened was over the years, it now turned into a pastime where young men primarily, you know, trying to win money, win fortune, you know, build their reputations would compete to represent their families, represent their cities, their states.
So it now turned into this pastime and it’s very much now got this vibrant ecosystem around it, where it’s Africa’s most popular traditional sport, arguably. Certainly Nigeria’s most popular traditional sport. And you have fighters who are basically nomadic. They travel around Nigeria competing in different different arenas, different marketplaces, different stadiums.
So we as African Warriors just saw this thing and as I said I started this sort of just been seeing the sport and was instantly excited about it and just now started working to how can we build the biggest possible platform for the sport.
How can we come in, where necessary, modernise in terms of introduce health and safety features, boost production value, ultimately boost the reward system for the fighters who are very much the lifeblood of the sport.
And we’ve been doing that for the past six years or so. It’s a great. And we’ve had great results doing it: secured just over 900 million content views. We have a core following across our platforms of over 1 million.
And we’ve just been able to demonstrate, I think, that this sport that comes from you know the dusty marketplaces of Northern Nigeria can actually be a global sport that’s enjoyed by combat sports fans around the world.
FLEUR:
So those 900 million views. Who are they?
MAXWELL:
So primarily it’s just global combat sports fans. And if you’re breaking it down by country, we have Nigeria as the top. Then after Nigeria, we have the US and Brazil. If you watch the UFC, if you watch boxing, you can probably get behind watching Dambe as well, which is is very exciting to us.
FLEUR:
I’m going to come back to that. But first, who are the characters involved? So who are the Hulk Hogans, the Rocks, or the Muhammad Alis?
MAXWELL:
I take your Hulk Hogan and The Rock and I raise you Coronavirus, um who is one of our best fighters. I’m not supposed to have favorites, he is one of my personal favorites.
Because for me, he just speaks to everything that African Warriors is about. So he took the name Coronavirus because he came to prominence um during COVID. And the fans nicknamed him that because his style was deadly. And he’s this young guy. He’s a showman. He’s confident, but he’s really nice and likable. And then you think about his background story. So this is a young man who comes through, he’s a second of 11 children, born and raised in a village in Kanu state in Northern Nigeria.
The house, he grew up in a one-room mud house basically with him and his siblings. And he started Dambe just because he wanted to, you know, like many young men before him, just wanted to build a name for himself.
And his mum initially was totally against it. and And she only changed her tune when, you know, he started winning fights, started bringing home trophies. And now he’s looking after his entire family from it.
And you then think about what the stakes are here, right? This is a young man from a poor family in northern Nigeria. He fits the bill, many cases, for ah sort of, you know, could quite easily enter a life of crime, could quite easily um sort of fall into the forces of people like Boko Haram.
But instead, he’s built with himself and built a name from the sport of Dambe, that he’s now a known entity, very much a local superstar. So yeah, we have people like Coronavirus who for me just summarise what African Warriors is about in terms of guys who are coming from some of the hardest possible backgrounds in this on this earth and ah actually competing, you know promoting and sort of very much personifying African warrior culture.
FLEUR:
And give me some idea of the scale of your operations.
MAXWELL:
African Warriors has been built and the vision behind it is to be Africa’s global contribution to combat sports.
So, yeah, so um really in terms of scale of events, nobody’s doing Dambe like us and nobody’s doing it at the level we’re doing it. So we’re producing events. We produced over 20 events um that are broadcast live across social media.
We also have numerous clips, full fights through to events, through to interviews that come out after an event. The last event we did, we featured the first ever international white Dambe fighter, guy called Luke Leyland, brought him all the way over from sunny Liverpool.
And he competed in front of 10,000 people in Katsina in northern Nigeria. And that for us was just a milestone moment for the sport because we’ve been able to show that we can build an international audience for it.
FLEUR:
I really want to come and see this. It sounds amazing. So you talked about taking it to the moon. So you have just announced that you got funding from Silverbacks Holding.
MAXWELL:
Yeah, so for us, um where we have a huge mission and vision, which is building Africa’s largest combat sports platform.
We take a lot of inspiration from the UFC. This is an organization that was sold for, I think, $2 million dollars around 2000, and then eventually was acquired for $4 billion in 2016.
So just to speak to the opportunity in this space and what we’re going after. So bringing Silverbacks on board just speaks to ah so you know, building a team of the best but and wanting the best people on the bench.
Silverbacks, super impressive outfit, early investors in Move, in Lemfi, and also have some great credibility in the sports space in Africa.
And I think, you know, when we think about African Warriors as an organization and talk about this internationalization piece, ah we cannot escape, you know, not speak about America.
America is very much a mature market when it comes to combat sports, very much the home of the UFC, of international boxing. um So for us working with partners that understand that goal in terms of building an organization that is very much African in its DNA but can be consumed globally, it was key that we find a partner in Silverbacks that understood that.
FLEUR:
So yeah, presumably it’s really part of your strategy to appeal to American audiences as well.
MAXWELL:
Yes, yes, exactly, exactly. In building an African start-up, um I think Africa’s in a unique position, right, where what we have, you know, what we might not have in terms of purchasing power compared to other countries, we have an outsized level of cultural power.
Afrobeats, I think, demonstrates that perfectly in terms of, you know, people around the world enjoying African music, enjoying music where they’re speaking African languages.
And we’re also seeing that in Nollywood in terms of the world of cinema, and we’re increasingly now seeing that in the world of sport. So yes, we’re building something at home that is very much enjoyed and engaged with locally.
And so I think we’re very well placed to take that sort of cultural cachet from Nigeria, from Africa, and sort make a product of that, which we’ve already done.
FLEUR:
What would you say to American investors who are thinking about investing in those kinds of markets?
MAXWELL:
I think the smart investor, the smart founder doesn’t just try and pluck an idea out of the US or anywhere else and drop it in Africa, but instead thinks about how could this complement, how can this speak to the local realities?
And with African Warriors, we’ve very much been able to do that. So I think for an American investor, for any international investor, I think if you have the appetite in terms of doing something that hasn’t been done before, if you’re ready, I think, to work with local operators who understand the space and sort of be able to apply a level of, okay, I can accept this person might understand the operating space a bit.
And it’s it’s sort of realities in comparison to somewhere else. um I think, yeah, this is a great place to to invest. I think we have everything in terms of population power, in terms of a growing youth population in terms of really excitable tribal fans.
And I think we’re seeing on a global level, be it music, be it cinema, that African culture has never been as valuable as it is now. So we African Warriors, we’re very much taking that and we’re packaging it in the sports business somewhere. We’re doing that to great success.
FLEUR:
And you were talking about scale: what is your vision?
MAXWELL:
So the vision for African warriors is being Africa’s combat sports leader. And we see that that speaks to the organization on multiple levels.
So Africa has a whole wealth of combat sports. Dambe is just the first one we’ve engaged with, but you have Senegalese wrestling, for example, you have numerous forms of boxing.
So I see us being the people that can modernize indigenous combat combat sports across Africa. produce events, produce content in multiple countries at multiple times. um I think the key thing as well is working with um emerging talent across the continent and and offering them new opportunities.
So be it offering them better financial awards for competing locally through to being a partner for them to go international um and working with them as they sort of build international careers and being the management behind them.
African sport, we have all of the right numbers in terms of population power, in terms of fan interest, in terms of increasingly, as I said, sort of brand Africa going global.
DIMPHO:
Thanks to Maxwell for a fascinating interview. The African Warriors Fighting Championship shows what can happen when Africans and Americans inspire each other. Look it up for more information and to watch the amazing combat sport of Dambe.
