An ambitious plan has been launched towards taking the traditional boxing sport of Northern Nigeria known as dambe onto the global stage.
This much was revealed by the CEO/founder of African Warriors Fighting Championship, Maxwell Kalu, who said during an interview on the sidelines of the Sports Africa Investment Summit 2025 that the move to internationalise dambe has reached an advanced stage.
He, however, pointed out that Nigerian media houses and individual journalists from the country have key roles to play in promoting local content rather than keep seeking information from foreign news outlets.
Maxwell added in an exclusive chat with Sports247: “The media plays such an important role in all parts of life. If we’re talking about sports, I just need the Nigerian media to take more of an interest in local content.
But, of a truth, we’ve had our biggest moments and biggest interests from the Nigerian media. They’ve given us attention more than how the international media has covered us.”
Although Maxwell admitted that Nigerian media houses have given dambe better coverage than it has received in the international sphere, he stressed that more effort has to be put into the manner in which news content is sourced, so that journalists would not just sit in armchairs waiting for news to break on air or merely go to pick up crumbs during press conferences.
He reiterated further, “We just want them to keep it up and step up more. We don’t have to wait to call when a piece comes from CNN or we wait to see what can drop at events. That’s not how it should be. That’s the wrong way round.
“We should start looking at where our media ought to be and how we can be taken seriously. Come with us, work with us. We are a proudly local Nigerian organisation. So, work with us to build a traditional grassroots forum.”
He concluded by charting a course of action and suggestions on how all sports stakeholders can join hands to ensure that dambe and other traditional Nigerian sporting events become viable and recognised internationally.
“My key call to the media is, ‘Take more interest, apply your journalistic principles, and work with us to grow Nigerian sports.’ We are Nigeria’s leading combat sports organisation.
We promote dambe, which is a traditional boxing native to Northern Nigeria. We are internationalising dambe through a mixture of content and a number of events.
“We are here at the Sports Africa Investment Summit beating the drum for dambe and engaging with fellow sports stakeholders from across Nigeria and Africa.
We all have to face the costs. Everybody must be kind to each other, work with each other and come to events where everyone is working together. I think that’s the key thing to do in developing sports,” Maxwell posited.
He reasoned that the best way to make sports grow is through collaborative efforts among people from all walks of life, hence his delight with what he described as a very productive forum for growth that was provided in the two-day investment summit in Lagos.
