2005 Pat Putnam Perseverance Award
KASSIM OUMA

by Ron Borges
Boston Globe

If ever anyone was saved by boxing it is Kassim Ouma.

A lot of kids living on the fringes of society can make that claim, but none more than he for boxing saved him not just from the ravages of poverty and despair which are boxing's breeding ground, but from a government's brutal army. Long before he would win the IBF junior middleweight title and become the inaugural recipient of the Pat Putnam Award for Perseverance, Ouma found himself trapped in a fight not just for his life but for his soul.

Kidnapped from a schoolhouse in Uganda by a rebel army at the age of six and forced to become a child soldier, Ouma lived a nightmare and survived it. The day they came to take his class away into the high grass where the rebel army hid, he had no idea they had come to teach him how to shoot a machine gun, handle a knife, make a bomb, throw a grenade and slit a throat before he reached the age of nine.

"I do not like to remember those times,'' the soft-spoken, 27-year-old Ouma says now about his 10 years in first the rebel army of Yoweri Museveni that fought to overthrow the oppressive regime of Milton Obote and then in the regular army after they succeeded.

His family didn't see him for four years, and when he re-appeared he was no longer a child. Now he was a child soldier, a 10-year-old little man with a stone for a heart.

"The first time I shot, I was not as big as the gun," Ouma recalled. "I fell right to the ground. I had to learn not to fall so I put a stone behind my foot. I figured it out. If you didn't, you died. I became a guerrilla. A soldier for my country. A corporal. Nobody can mess with that. I was mean."

Ouma survived in ways he's still trying to forget until he found boxing at 14. Soon he was the best fighter in his country, a three-time national and East African champion with a 60-3 record. He was named Uganda's top amateur athlete and that produced his chance for a different life when he was issued a travel visa. He arrived without an overcoat or much money but he had a plan. He would do what he'd always done to survive. He would fight.

"I didn't know how to use a phone," Ouma said. "I was giving away quarters and keeping pennies because they were so shiny I liked them more. My life wasn't so good, but I found a gym and met a manager at a fight card. There were two professionals I could spar. I was an amateur kid from Uganda, but I was giving them hell. I didn't speak good English. They made fun of me. I didn't care. I said what they said. All I wanted to do was fight one pro fight and go home. I thought you got to pick who you wanted to fight. I wanted to fight De La Hoya, make a million and go home. I didn't know nothing."

Eventually he found the Alexandria Boxing Club, where he got in touch with Hall of Fame trainer Lou Duva. Five months after coming to America, Ouma knocked out Napolean Middlebrooks in his pro debut. Six years later, after facing many setbacks that included being shot by an angry co-worker and being KO'd in one round while mugging for his girlfriend in the crowd instead of paying attention to his business, he would win a world title and turn a life that began as a nightmare into a dream.

Pat Putnam Award
In 2006, the BWAA created the Pat Putnam Award for Perseverance to honor the passing of the legendary boxing writer. Putnam survived 17 months as a Korean War POW and became one of boxing journalism's most influential voices. Putnam crafted remarkable prose for the Miami Herald and Sports Illustrated, winning the Fleischer Award in 1982.

2005 -- Kassim Ouma