Landmark is level 2 of 4 in the Uganda Hall of Fame: a first that opened a door, or the pre-eminent figure of their generation in this country. See how the levels work.
Why they are here
Olympic silver at Moscow in 1980 and later a world light-middleweight title — by common account one of the hardest punchers the sport has seen.
John Mugabi took the silver medal at welterweight at the Moscow Olympics in 1980, losing the final on a decision, and turned professional the following year.
He won his first twenty-five fights, every one of them by knockout — a record almost nobody in the modern era has matched — which is where the name came from. Trainers and opponents describe a puncher whose power did not diminish over rounds.
In March 1986 he fought Marvelous Marvin Hagler for the undisputed middleweight championship of the world and was stopped in the eleventh round, after taking Hagler further and hurting him more than anyone expected. Hagler afterwards called it the hardest fight of his career, and many observers regard those eleven rounds as the best boxing a Ugandan has ever produced.
He won the WBC light-middleweight title in 1989, knocking out René Jacquot in the first round. He fought on into the 1990s, and his career is bracketed by the Ugandan boxing tradition that Ayub Kalule had opened a decade earlier.
He won his first twenty-five fights, every one of them by knockout — a record almost nobody in the modern era has matched — which is where the name came from. Trainers and opponents describe a puncher whose power did not diminish over rounds.
In March 1986 he fought Marvelous Marvin Hagler for the undisputed middleweight championship of the world and was stopped in the eleventh round, after taking Hagler further and hurting him more than anyone expected. Hagler afterwards called it the hardest fight of his career, and many observers regard those eleven rounds as the best boxing a Ugandan has ever produced.
He won the WBC light-middleweight title in 1989, knocking out René Jacquot in the first round. He fought on into the 1990s, and his career is bracketed by the Ugandan boxing tradition that Ayub Kalule had opened a decade earlier.
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