Abdul; an upcoming and prosperous 18 year old boxer tells us what boxing is made of. Whether it be ferocity or actual mindfulness. The moment you as a person make your move from whatever is outside and into the boxing gym, you will feel a sudden relief. You are in a complete different atmosphere. You enter a new world and a new order. A place which is incomparable to whatever sphere you intervene on a daily basis. It feels as if your identity is being taken from you at the door when you get in. Suddenly you are anybody or at least you might as well have been anybody. One amongst the others. There will be only one thing on your mind. The rest doesn’t actually matter at this point. Your focus is set and all the voices in your head is far gone amongst the simmering frequencies that where there just a second ago whilst you were walking the streets. Shut down the squeaky talking transistor in your brain and do as you are told. It will all happen on demand. Do not resist or leak the power of your effort in hesitating and disbelieve. Relax and let destiny be the barrier or the carrier. I enter.
Everything is well used. Standards are standards, I guess, nothing else. Boxing gloves in a pile, mats in a pile, the varnished floor which has got an obvious grounded trace It’s time to get real with a few punches of boxing reality, Abdul; an upcoming and prosperous 18 year old boxer tells us what boxing is made of. Whether it be ferocity or actual mindfulness. The moment you as a person make your move from whatever is outside and into the boxing gym, you will feel a sudden relief. You are in a complete different atmosphere. You enter a new world and a new order. A place which is incomparable to whatever sphere you intervene on a daily basis. It feels as if your identity is being taken from you at the door when you get in. Suddenly you are anybody or at least you might
as well have been anybody. One amongst the others. There will be only one thing on your mind. The rest doesn’t actually matter at this point. Your focus is set and all the voices in your head is far gone amongst the simmering frequencies interview witnessing that the room wasn’t used for tea parties. It’s all been tormented down to this. Ghetto rigged into a shape that is born to last and not to give up. I am in the C.I.K. bokseklub at Christianshavn, Copenhagen. The former training ground of the famous Mikkel Kessler. At this very place a new star is in the making. Having beaten up the worlds number 3 without much difficulty, and won both the Danish and Nordic championship, Abdul Khattab is close to his breakthrough. Abdul Khattab is a Lebanese Palestinian. His parents fled from Palestine and gave birth to 4 of their now 5 sons in an asylum center in Lebanon called Ein el-Hilweh. When he was eight years old he and his family came to an asylum center in Denmark with help from his uncles, who already lived there. “When I got to Denmark it was all strange days. Till then I imagined that the whole world would all speak Arab. I was only a kid back then. Living in a centre of asylum wasn’t that bad at all. I made new friends every day, but to the grownups it was a different story. Though I wasn’t involved I could see that it worried the minds of my parents. Plus the older kids got bored. But me and my brothers just played around. 5 years later moving from centre to centre we finally got settled in a townhouse where we still live
”How did you start boxing?
“When the other kids at the center began attending football, basketball and such my dad, who used to be a good boxer in is young days back in Lebanon, asked me if I wanted to do boxing instead. I loved to fight. Me and my brothers was always in one big fight trying to conquer the internal title of being the strongest. So I liked the idea. Plus I admired my dad for being a boxer. So it started out being me and two of my other brothers. The other two came in later on, when
they saw that they had to keep up. It was a wild fight in the beginning. Me and my brothers got pretty personal and my trainer Ricard Olsen didn’t think I’d ever come back. But I went home and came back again the next day. My trainer could see in me after a while that I wanted to fight and I loved it. back. But I went home and came back again the next day. My trainer could see in me after a while that I wanted to fight and I loved it.
Do you reckon you had talent even back then?
Yes. I have always been told that I was good. I’ve been raised all the way. To an 11 year old boy, being told that you have talent is an immense feeling of motivation. It gives you a purpose that you won’t give up easily.
What is talent?
Talent to me is something you have. Maybe you do something and you become good at it, but you won’t ever be more than that just good. Having talent is knowing with yourself that you are the best and you keep training hard every day till you fulfill and prove the talent you have. I guess that’s is being talented.
So would you say that at this moment you are simply taking care of your talent? “Yes, that’s about it.” Abdul says in a satisfied tone. Is self-esteem important to have as a boxer? It means everything to a boxer. If you can’t convince yourself, your act won’t be convincing. Once you start losing matches and losing confidence you are basically lost. But a boxer can always come back. One simply just has to train harder. But believing in yourself to the fullest extent is essential in boxing.