STYLES MAKE FIGHTERS
The 23-year-old Olajide and his father relocated to an apartment in New York City, where competition and opportunities were abundant. Rather than flying sparring partners into Vancouver, he was surrounded by world- class talent in spots like Gleason’s Gym. He was also suddenly surrounded by
of bounce-back wins, was stopped by Iran Barkley. But the criticism that Olajide was too pretty for boxing wasn’t borne out by his attitude in the ring. If anything, Olajide was too willing to stand and trade with fearsome punchers, too willing to part ways with his jab- and-move abilities. As his mother told
scientific for the straight punches, the way in which you move – it describes exactly who that individual is. You look at any individual as a boxer, and if they’re not overtrained by their trainer, like overly conditioned to do certain things, and they’re still in touch with their nature, you could tell that person’s very social nature just by looking at them fight.”
When I’m in the ring, he needs to feel pain like I feel pain.” After one final fight in 1991 against Ralph Moncrief, Olajide retired from competition, but not before giving the sport a glimpse into the future once more. Against Hearns, his mash-up of a Prince track from the Batman soundtrack (to match his Batman-inspired getup) and an Annie Lennox song was nixed at the last second due to a copyright claim, so this time he had an artist perform live. Q-Ball, who was bubbling on the underground New York rap scene, performed during his walkout. A young Roy Jones Jr. was sitting ringside, ostensibly to scout Olajide as a possible future opponent, and might have left with an idea he later implemented with Redman and Method Man in the very MSG theater where Olajide once headlined. With his fighting career
the diversity, music and fashion scene he adored. On the back of his publicity as MSG’s new house fighter, Olajide quickly found himself not only in this magazine’s pages, but in those of Ebony and New York Magazine as well. To put into perspective the kind of buzz Olajide enjoyed, his NY Mag feature, which christened him “boxing’s newest stud,” came directly after the obituary of Andy Warhol that adorned the issue’s cover. Olajide even wound up rubbing shoulders with Prince at the legendary Nell’s nightclub after seeing him perform three times that night. “I go, ‘Prince!’ and he turns, he looks at me. I go, ‘Hey, my name is Michael Olajide. I know you,’ and I’m just like, brrr, really fast. ‘I don’t know if you know who I am, but I just had a fight against this kid Troy Darrell and I’m the number one contender in the world, and I wore a paisley outfit like your Raspberry Beret movie.’ And he looks at me up and down, he looks, and then he stops for a
In the wake of the loss to Barkley in particular, boxing media began calling for Olajide’s retirement, an unreasonably quick-triggered reaction to a pair of losses to an undefeated Olympic gold medalist and a top-10 contender who would win a middleweight title in his very next bout and ultimately wind up on the Hall of Fame ballot. The cruel irony, however, is that those were indeed prudent calls, though not for the reasons suggested.
In a 1987 sparring session, Olajide was hit with an uppercut that damaged his orbital bone. A couple years later, after parting ways with his father as trainer and linking up with Hector Roca (and later Angelo Dundee), he was hit with a Merqui Sosa uppercut that made him see double – permanently. Olajide managed to hide his troubles and adapted his style such that he mostly saw punches with his left eye, even going the 12-round distance against Thomas Hearns in 1990 with compromised vision. “You have to understand what your body is, and that’s what I didn’t understand,” said Olajide. “I’m built like a greyhound; I’m not built like a pit bull. A pit bull is gonna be able to take something, you know what I mean? But when I get hit, whether I like it or not, whether I want to or not, it’s registering on my body in a different way. So my nature has to be different than that of my body. I just didn’t, because my nature was like, ‘I need to knock him out.’
Olajide dropped a decision to Frank Tate in his first title shot.
over and money tight living alone in New York City, Olajide began to teach boxing classes. As he worked through the anguish of his body betraying him, he envisioned a new way to engage with and contribute to the sport. “You’re on the street, you hear this rhythm in your head, and you start shadowboxing. You start doing your thing. And so I started doing that,” recalls Olajide. “I’d wake up in the mornings and I would just do that, have the music on, and I’d be flashbacking to my fights – I should have done this, I should have done that – but I’m boxing and I’m putting it on the beat.” Olajide remembers attending an aerobics class with his close friend Tammy during the height of the early- ’80s aerobics craze and not being able to do his roadwork the next morning because of how sore he was. It was never lost on him that a professional athlete was crushed by the workout “for moms and girlfriends.” So he began marrying
his own boxing routine to the beat of the cardio class framework, and through a number of fast connections, he became employed by Equinox to teach his Aerobox classes. Over the years, Olajide has been credited with revolutionizing and popularizing aerobic boxing, which has become an indispensable boxing entry point for women in particular, with some studies suggesting they make up over 70% of its participants. Decades after his fighting career ended, Olajide would experience a second wave of fame for his work training Victoria’s Secret models, bringing his boxing and fashion passions even closer than ever before. “I do think winning helps the human spirit, and it helps women to have that confidence in yourself that you can achieve, that you can,” said Olajide. “You’re not just somebody’s sexual icon. Like when I was working with Adriana Lima and she really wanted to learn boxing, I threw punches at her
and she slipped them. It wasn’t just, you know, ‘I’m going to hit the pads.’ She’s digging body shots. She’s throwing real left hooks. She’s throwing real right hands. She was really about it. If you asked her to get in there and spar with somebody, it’s a wrap. It was crazy to me. I was like, ‘Wait a minute.’ I lost an eye, I have concussions, I have all this stuff. But, you know, this gorgeous woman who walks in a bikini down the road, I get as much acknowledgement or more acknowledgement for that than for actually fighting. Yeah, it’s incredible.” Olajide might not have kicked down the front door of the boxing industry in the way originally imagined, but he opened up windows to let some light in and installed side entrances for new people to join and participate.
Mark Breland and Mike Tyson pose with Olajide in the late ’80s.
second. He just stops there, and then he just keeps walking. And then as he’s walking, he keeps looking back at me like this and back, and he did that three times. He looked back at me, he’s like, ‘Yo, is this dude crazy?’ I’m thinking he’s thinking, ‘This dude is lying his ass off; he ain’t no professional boxer!’” The Purple One’s doubts would soon be echoed by the same industry that helped prop Olajide up. He dropped a 15-round decision to Frank Tate in a bid for the vacant IBF middleweight title, and five months later, after a pair
CBC reporters after the loss to Tate, “To hell with the paisley shorts and stuff – it’s what’s inside them.” “I feel boxing – the physical side of boxing – is exactly that you fight how your personality is,” said Olajide. “You fight how punches are forms of expression, really. Like hooks, you’re an aggressive fighter. [...] You’re
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