By Wednesday morning, the match was the biggest news in the capital.
Ahmad Noor, 42, a construction company manager, quipped that Mr.
Rahimi’s fame now equaled that of President Hamid Karzai and Mullah Muhammad Omar, the Taliban
leader. (Mr. Omar surely would have been displeased with the
comparison, since he banned boxing when the Taliban ruled Afghanistan.)
Adel, 30, a street-side snack vendor who uses only a single name, said
Mr. Rahimi’s victory was better than Id al-Adha, a major Islamic holiday
that ended a few days ago. In American terms, that would be like saying
it was better than Christmas.
If anything, the late summer and autumn of 2012 may well be remembered
by Kabulis as the time when Western-style professional sports finally
came to their city. The boxing match, as well as a string of soccer
games, gave many a good reason to forget, at least for a few hours, the
Taliban, the foreigners, the warlords and every other unwelcome group or
unsavory character that has inflicted pain and suffering here.
Afghanistan has long had an active amateur sports scene, and Afghan
athletes have competed internationally in the last few years. But many
of those efforts — a women’s boxing team, for instance — often seemed to
be at least partly geared toward Westerners eager to see how their
countries’ efforts were changing Afghanistan.
This season’s big sports events, in contrast, were aimed squarely at Afghans themselves. Before the Fight 4 Peace came the Afghan Premier League, a well-organized professional soccer league that concluded its inaugural season a few weeks ago.
Both the boxing match and the soccer league had the trappings of
big-time American or European sports events, with corporate sponsorships
and live television broadcasts. Each was easily as big a story to
Afghans as the events here that grabbed the Western news media’s
attention, like the end of the American surge, which played out during
the Premier League season.
“Why do I have to think about the Taliban or Obama when I watch a game?
What do you think about?” snapped Muhammad Ishaq Geran at a Premier
League match in late September when asked a few too many questions about
watching soccer under Taliban rule.
Mr. Geran, 48, an administrator at the Ministry of Public Health, said
the Taliban had nearly ruined soccer for him. Back when they were in
power, games were often turned into propaganda spectacles with
executions and amputations at half time.
He hated it. But with television, music, dancing and a host of other
entertainment options banned, the soccer games “were the only
entertainment we had,” he said. So he closed his eyes during the
executions.
Now that Afghanistan had the Premier League, he could finally find the
same escape in sports that fans do all over the world, he said. The
cheap tickets — 30 afghanis, or $0.60, a seat — and live television
broadcasts helped, too.
The Squabble in Kabul provided the same escape but at a steeper price.
Tickets were 3,000 afghanis, about $60, and scalpers were selling them
for as much as 12,000 afghanis, or nearly $240.
The ring was set up inside what is known as the loya jirga tent, a large
concrete conference hall originally built for Afghan leaders to meet
and decide matters of national importance, like whether to sign a strategic partnership deal with the United States.
No one was debating international affairs on Tuesday night. First came
the mullah, who recited a prayer that he said the Prophet Muhammad spoke
before conquering Mecca. Then came blaring pop music of a decidedly
un-Islamic bent — “give me what you got in store, girl, I’m begging for
more” — and the other opening acts.
The roughly 3,000 men at the tent were riled up by the time the fight
got under way. Mr. Mbelwa, who had to know he did not have a fan in the
house, quickly embraced the role of the villain, theatrically pumping
his fists at the crowd between rounds.
The fighters each got in their punches until early in the seventh round
when Mr. Rahimi hit Mr. Mbelwa in the shoulder. The Tanzanian retreated
to his corner, gripping the shoulder with his glove. The fight was over.
The crowd went wild at the announcement Mr. Rahimi had won. Even Mr.
Mbelwa appeared to get caught up in the moment. He grabbed the new
champion, who is now marketing an energy drink here, and lifted him into
the air — and spawned Afghanistan’s latest conspiracy theory: that of
the rigged boxing match.
“I think it was fixed,” said Arash, 27, a money exchanger who uses only a
single name. “His rival grabbed him and raised him even though he was
defeated.”
This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:Correction: November 3, 2012
The Kabul Journal article on Thursday, about a professional championship boxing match in Kabul, Afghanistan, misspelled the surname of the contender from Tanzania. He is Said Mbelwa, not Mbwela.
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