Fitness
When South Africa’s first black MMA champion was left in a 10-day coma by meningitis, he woke to discover he was blind. But his life in the ring wasn’t over. The fight had just begun.
Fight night at Durban’s Greyville Racecourse. Outside, lightning flares and rain lashes the streets; inside, flashing neon lights strafe a packed function room as 2,000 spectators await the start of the bimonthly Pro-Am MMA tournament. First on the card is Iksaan Rahaman, a bantamweight fighter and part of local team GBH, or Gorgeous Boyz Hardcore. Rahaman is fit, toned. He bounces on his feet in eager anticipation. His opponent, just as compact and efficient, runs through his own warm-up. Then the fight is on. The crowd cheers above the slap of skin on skin.
At first, it appears this is not Rahaman’s night. But then, in a flurry of well-timed kicks and a late takedown, his opponent is beaten by a KO, and Rahaman’s hand is raised in victory. Later, he will credit his win to coach Ronald Dlamini, South Africa’s first black welterweight champion. What makes the achievement surprising is that for the past five years Dlamini has been totally blind. A blow-by-blow account of the fight has been recounted to Dlamini, but he didn’t need to see it to know how it played out. In the preceding weeks, he and Rahaman trained hour after hour for this moment, anticipating the opponent’s moves, his reactions, his weaknesses.
Rahaman hadn’t met or trained with Dlamini prior to the latter’s loss of sight, but, post-fight, he has no doubt it was his coach’s deadly insight that brought victory. “The man can do incredible things for somebody who can’t see,” Rahaman says. “He can parry punches, he can attack, he can take you down and force you into submission. He teaches that you don’t have to see everything, just have a feel for it.”
Blind ambition
At 78kg and 1.76m tall, Dlamini has the broad, muscular frame of an athlete. Cauliflower ears betray his fighting past, but he is handsome, lithe. His professional MMA record up until 2012 – the year he last fought professionally – is an impressive 27-4 (two defeats by KO, the other two due to earlier injuries). But then Dlamini learnt early on how to survive a fight.
All other senses are amplified: I smell better, I hear better. Just by touching you, I know your body weight. When I spar, I listen to the breathing. I listen to the footsteps. I’ll strike where you’re most vulnerable
“I’ve always been interested in it,” he says, calmly. “I came from a poor family and was very quiet and shy. I had a very big head, and the bullies used to tease me about it. Every day after school, I’d have to fight my way out.”
His non-schoolyard fighting career began when, at the age of 11, he left his grandmother’s house where he’d grown up, and went to live with his parents and 14-year-old brother in Mandeni in Sundumbili township, a 90-minute drive from Durban. His brother trained in Kyokushin karate, a brutal, full-contact form of the sport. Bored at home, Dlamini announced he would go along to the dojo, too. There, his interest was met with amused scepticism, and although he had no knowledge of the sport he was pitted against one of the club’s best fighters.
“They made me spar with a black belt my first session!” he says, his voice rising an octave. “I didn’t care, man. I was mean. I had nothing to lose. I decided then that I wanted to be the best.” After walking 6km to school each day, Dlamini would run 10km to the gym, train, then run home again, determined to better the black belt. “Three months later, I hit him. Two months later, he could not have his way with me,” he says, his pride still evident.
Dlamini wasn’t finished. He wanted to be challenged, literally and figuratively. Having grown tired of karate, he switched to kickboxing at 19, before taking up Muay Thai. It was at his debut Muay Thai fight he first gained the moniker that endures to this day: ‘Black Mamba’. Few black South Africans had the resources required to advance to Dlamini’s level, so all his opponents were white. Dlamini – black, muscular, and as proficient at showboating as in executing lightning-fast takedowns
– stood out immediately. In that first fight, he knocked down his opponent, then performed the splits while waiting for him to get back up. The crowd loved it. “I won and everyone started screaming, ‘Black Mamba! Black Mamba!’” he laughs.
Dlamini volunteered for his MMA debut to help out a friend at late notice. He won the bout, but, as his reputation grew, he was subjected to racial slurs posted online by a prominent white fighter. Dlamini kept quiet, and in 2010 a South African welterweight title match was arranged to settle the score. Dlamini made fast work of his opponent. “I had him down on the floor. His coach was shouting things he should do. But I kept telling him, ‘It’s not going to work, baby!’” Dlamini won the fight – then jumped up onto the cage. His trainer, Rhyne Hassan, had become the first black coach of an MMA champion, and Dlamini was the first black welterweight champion in South African history.
Two years later, Dlamini retired from pro fighting. He’d achieved all he could and was no longer being challenged. He was at the top of his game.
Dark days
It was around this time the headaches started; a throbbing bloom of pain. After a few days, Dlamini went to the hospital. A doctor told him he had meningitis but could be cured. After the medical man left, and seeing Dlamini was in pain, a nurse approached, injected him with a painkiller and told him not to tell the doctor. “She took five steps back and I lost my sight,” he says, his words heavy as he recalls the shock and confusion of being plunged into darkness. “I was in a coma for 10 days. When I woke, I felt mad. I was trying to hit everyone – I thought I was in the ring.”
After a few days, Dlamini’s first visitors were allowed to see him. His twin sister sat with him every day, and friends from GBH stopped by when they could. Seeing the champion slumped in his hospital bed brought hardened fighters to tears. As Dlamini struggled to get to grips with his new, dark world, his body was racked with pain and he was unable to eat. His weight plunged to a gaunt 49kg. It was difficult to believe the great Black Mamba could rise again.
“I was in a coma for 10 days. When I woke, I felt mad. I was trying to hit everyone – I thought I was in the ring.”
But instead of staying down, Dlamini decided to fight. He moved into his family home, where his sister and parents would bathe him and cook his meals. Slowly, as the months passed, he learnt how to function again. As his strength returned, Ronald began to stubbornly refuse help as he moved around the house. He knew that if he was to regain a fraction of his former strength, he would have to relearn how to master his body.
Dlamini had been handed a new challenge, and he rose to it with the same vigour that had brought him victory in the ring. “My mind started coming back. I knew, blind or not, I had to come out of there and make a difference,” he says. He wanted to train, to get back into the ring. “Losing your sight humbles your spirit and demoralises you. To live is to suffer, but you have to find meaning within that suffering. I felt I was being given this cross because I could carry it.”
Most of the blind people Dlamini met during his recovery were not so motivated; many had stories of abuse – some had been robbed, others assaulted. Dlamini’s path suddenly seemed clear: he would teach self-defence to the visually impaired. “I wouldn’t have known about these people if I was sighted,” he says. “I wanted to pass on my skills.”
Feeling that he was beginning to find himself again, Dlamini called his friends for a meeting at the local mall. Over food, he told them he was still the same Black Mamba; they’d just have to adjust to him here and there. He made jokes. They laughed. “I learned that from fighting: when you lose a fight, face your friends straight away and move on. I’ve lost in front of everybody. I’ve been disappointed before. You have to move forward.”
Fighting back
Moving is something that still comes naturally to Dlamini. Watching the 37-year-old working out at the Train Gym, the headquarters of GBH, it’s clear that the loss of sight has not diminished his skill in the ring. He moves naturally and effortlessly. He’s in incredible shape and works by instinct with a punch bag, twisting and turning lightly on his feet, landing every hit. Dlamini is training with Hassan – one of the best fighters GBH has ever produced, and one of his closest friends – as he has done so many times before. “He has managed to accept his circumstances,” says Hassan, as he watches his friend. “It was do or die.
Losing your sight humbles your spirit and demoralises you. To live is to suffer, but you have to find meaning within that suffering. I felt I was being given this cross because I could carry it.
I never thought I would see anyone that strong. This is someone who lived a full life, and he’s still trying to live a full life. I asked him one day in hospital what he would do if he could do anything in the world. He said, ‘I want to be training with you guys.’ That’s all he wanted.”
With tragic coincidence, three months before Dlamini lost his sight, he and Hassan had begun fighting blindfolded. The idea was that it would be useful if either man had to defend himself in the dark – they had no idea how useful it would prove. It helped Dlamini believe he would fight again, that he could hone his other senses. For example, he’s now he’s able to give detailed directions while travelling by car, pointing out landmarks with pinpoint accuracy. But it’s in the ring, where, as a coach, Dlamini spars with both blind and sighted partners on a daily basis, that his metamorphosis really becomes visible.
He has discovered that MMA, with its emphasis on contact, grappling and holds, plays to his strengths. “All it takes is one touch, then I know where you are and what you are doing,” he says. In the ring he can visualise an opponent’s steps, the direction of their lunges, and where their fist will land. And he knows instinctively that if a fist is coming towards his head, it’s likely his opponent’s torso is unguarded. Then all Dlamini has to do is get close, get hold of you, and put an end to the fight.
“The strongest sense in humans is visual,” he says. “It’s very hard for you to forget something you see. Now, it’s hard for me to forget something I’ve touched. All other senses are amplified: I smell better, I hear better. Just by touching you, I know your body weight. When I spar, I listen to the breathing. I listen to the footsteps. I’ll strike where you’re most vulnerable.”
Second sight
At the MMA tournament at Greyville Racecourse on Saturday night, Dlamini negotiates the crowd with Hassan, who wears sunglasses, a tracksuit and lots of gold. Dlamini – in full Black Mamba mode – sports a thick GBH chain, a cap worn backwards, and a GBH T-shirt. Other GBH members greet him as he passes. The evening has been organised by local martial arts legend Larry Vorstor, known respectfully as Shihan Larry. Dlamini taught MMA at his dojo after winning the welterweight championship. “I love him to pieces,” Vorstor says. “There’s no end to him. He’s a cage-fighting champion who’s gone blind but hasn’t tapped out. He’s an absolute inspiration.”
In the changing room, where Rahaman and the other competitors are warming up, Dlamini is greeted by the fighters one by one. They respectfully call him “sensei” and hold him closely as they talk tactics. Dlamini is quiet, focused, in his element. He no longer sits in his fighter’s corner in the ring, but instead gives a pep talk here before the bout. He may not be able to see, but right now he is the one in the room with the clearest vision. “I can’t see the fight,” Dlamini shrugs. “I have someone describing it, and I can see it in my head. But as long as the fighters know I’m there, they’re all right. When they see me, they find strength, because they know I’m the guy who never gives up.”
Dlamini has many plans for the future. Next year, he will give seminars on life as a blind man, and he has a contract to run a second blind MMA class in a wealthy part of town. It’s his ambition to train blind fighters worldwide. “I’m trying to create a united society. I don’t want anyone to feel discriminated against or isolated,” he says. “I want to travel the world and bring light to people. I don’t want to sit around and complain that it’s all over. You have to create your chances.”
He stands, ready to head back into the distant din of the Saturday night crowd and take on his next challenge. “If you’re still breathing,” The Black Mamba says with a smile, “you have to try.”
This article is taken from the April 2018 issue of The Red Bulletin. To get the new issue delivered straight to your door, subscribe here.