By Charles Okogene
I first ran into Olympian, Jerry Okorodudu, in the 1990s; not sure now of the exact year and month.
But suffice it to say that it was shortly after the impressive showing of the Nigerian boxers at the sports showpiece in Los Angeles, America, which he was a part of.
I met him at the National Stadium through the help of friends like John Atale, now based in Abuja, the late Mustapha Abdullah alias Sokolee, and Rilwan Omosun, all of us of the Evening Times, an evening newspaper that was then on the stable of the authentic Daily Times of Nigeria Plc.
The chance meeting became a regular one. That was in the days when he was preparing to square it up with the then custom man, Joe Lasisi.
We became his unofficial publicists for the fight. We used the pages of ET, as Evening Times was known then to do that. Some of the reasons we did that was that we were all ‘Bendelites’ because then, IBB has not balkanised the state into Edo/Delta.
Another reason was that he was an Olympian who had then brought honour to his fatherland. If you like call it ‘tribalism.’ But we were not of same tribe.
We did all we could publicity wise for Jerry and if publicity alone can win a match for a boxer, Okorodudu would have won that epic fight against Lasisi on the account of what we used ET to do for him.
We became a regular face at his boxing camp inside the Nigerian Army barracks in Morocco, Shomolu Lagos. Sometimes we get there first before him and closed with him to run to Agidingbi in Ikeja to file in our reports.
Such was our relationship with Okorodudu who was a flamboyant boxer with his oily jerry curled hair, a dandy too, who tried to talk like Mohammed Ali, his role model.
Then on the day of the fight with expectation so high that Jerry will win, he failed to live up to his many pre-match boasts. In a twinkle of an eye, hard hitting Lasisi that looked like Marvin Hagler, pummeled Okorodudu to submission earlier than we expected.
Jerry had no answer as the Kwara State-born Lasisi landed the blows. He fell flat on his back. He kissed the canvassed faster than we expected and we, his fans, tucked our ‘tails’ in between our legs like dogs in shame as we headed home.
But that was not all for the tough talking Okorodudu. He stood up and at the usual post match chat with journalists, he alleged that Lasisi hit him with ‘juju’ that broke his arm. According to him, Lasisi laced his gloves with juju prepared for him by Senegalese marabouts.
That was how it all ended; that was how my relationship with him took a back seat except occasionally when I bump into him when I usually come to eat what Shaibu Hussein, used to refer to as ‘whale’ at O’jez.
Sleep well Jerry boy!
