Music booms through Akinyemi Laleye's earbud headphones and into his mind. Less than an hour before his sixth professional fight, Laleye sits on a thinly padded chair in a converted locker room at the Westshore Doubletree Hotel in Tampa, Fla., bobbing his head without expression.

His hands, already taped by his trainer, hold his MP3 player.

Rhymes from Nashville rapper Young Buck - from one of the 500 rap songs loaded on his player - shoot into Laleye.

On this battlefield, you know, it's kill or be killed
Leavin' n------ with bulletholes and hospital bills

Laleye, 25, says he's focusing on Round 1, and the one-two combination he thinks will put his opponent down.

"Ching-check," Laleye says, echoing the sound of his hands in motion.

Laleye is a chiseled 175-pound light heavyweight from St. Pete Boxing Club. Coming into the fight, he's 5-0 with two knockouts. Two weeks after this fight, he will travel to Melbourne, Fla., to be the primary sparring partner for Roy Jones Jr., one of the greatest boxers of all time.

Laleye has spent most of his life navigating the space between being a brawler and an intellectual. He would love to talk about the corruption, oil policy and politics of his native Nigeria, but more day-to-day conflicts have consumed his life.

Laleye dreams of one day returning to Nigeria and fighting battles with his mind instead of his fists. He wants to become a politician and help end the poverty and strife that has ravaged his people.

For seven years of his childhood, Laleye and his three brothers bounced between boarding homes in northern Nigeria, after his father ran afoul of the government. At age 17, he secured a visa to the United States because his mother is an American citizen. Soon after graduating high school, Laleye enlisted in the military. He served two tours on the front lines in Iraq and one in Afghanistan. Upon his return, he found boxing for the first time.

That's how Akinyemi Laleye became AK-47, his nickname in the ring. Now, politics will have to wait. When training, Laleye trades the words of Nigerian authors like Wole Soyinka and Chinua Achebe, for the slow growls of guys like Young Buck.

On the day of the fight, he does nothing except eat and rest. He doesn't know who his opponent is and he doesn't care.

"I can't be a nice guy," Laleye says. "It's time to get gorilla."

***

On a recent Thursday, Laleye opens the door to the St. Pete Boxing Club on 49th Street South carrying his car keys, his cell phone and a tub of cream, which he rubs on his body to sweat faster.

The scene isn't much different than when Laleye first came to the club in 2003 -except now there's air-conditioning.

A ring, three heavy bags, a treadmill and a speed bag make up the decor, all of which fits in less than 1,500 square feet. Inside, the walls are plastered with colorful old fight posters and photographs of the club's current stable of boxers.

"It was the dirtiest, smelliest, raggediest gym," Laleye said.

But it was also the gym of champions.

Since its birth nearly 24 years ago, St. Pete Boxing Club has become one of the most heralded clubs in the nation. Its members include Winky Wright and Jeff Lacy, former world title holders and current top contenders. The gym's head trainer, Dan Birmingham, was named national trainer of the year in 2004 and 2005 by sportswriters.

Laleye works to become one of the gym's next stars. He has lost just one fight in both his amateur and professional careers and has sparred with Wright and Lacy, most recently preparing Wright for the middleweight's June title bout with Jermain Taylor.

Three years ago, a chance meeting with Wright lured Laleye to the gym for the first time. Visiting his two brothers in St. Petersburg after his discharge from the Navy, Laleye ran into Wright at the Tyrone Square Mall. Laleye had seen Wright fight on television while he served in Iraq and had been impressed. He introduced himself, and Wright encouraged him to come to the club.

Without any formal training, Laleye walked into St. Pete and took out the first man he faced.

"In five years, he should be fighting for a title of some kind," said Andy Lockhart, 64, Laleye's co-manager and Birmingham's father-in-law. "I see him at the top of the light heavyweight charts."

It would be quite an ascension considering where Laleye started.

***

His family was wealthy once, living in Lagos, the second largest city in Africa. When Laleye was 10 the government turned against his father, a businessman. Laleye and his three brothers fled to a succession of boarding homes in the north of the country to hide.

In the homes Laleye subsisted on one meal a day of processed cassava, a starchy root. Often, he and his brothers were separated. He saw lynchings, people beaten to death in open-air markets and people made to wear a tire necklace before being set on fire. He suffered from an array of tropical diseases.

"We were living like savages, man," Laleye said. "You would go in there and you would lose half your body weight before you come out. The air makes you skinny. A couple of people died every day. I can't explain it because you can't imagine it. You have to see it. You have to see that s---."

So Laleye fought back by becoming a bully, filching weaker kids' lunch money. He would arrive at school at 7 a.m., he said, and by 10 o'clock his pockets would be full.

"We used to fight every day," said Laleye's brother Inka, 22, an amateur boxer at St. Pete. "It was like nothing. That was a known fact. There'd be no electricity, we couldn't play video games. There was nothing to do. It'd be too dark to play outside, so you best believe Ak was going to fight somebody."

Akinyemi Laleye and his brothers secured visas to the United States with the help of their mother, a nurse in Gary, Ind. Although Laleye had already graduated from high school in Nigeria, his school in the United States didn't accept all his credits, so he had to take more classes. After earning his diploma in 1999, he was lured to the Navy by the prospect of being able to pay his own way to college and the tough reputation of the Navy Seals.

Fighting was never far away. Laleye was stationed in San Diego. A trip to Tijuana with two friends led to a gash on Laleye's right arm that needed 64 stitches to close and still leaves a winding scar. The trio, Laleye said, ran into 10 members of a Mexican gang and at least one pulled a blade.

Then came Sept. 11, 2001, and Laleye was sent abroad to fight. First he went to Iraq, then Afghanistan, then back to Iraq.

Laleye felt like he might as well have been back in Lagos. He spoke about his time at war the same as he did about street fighting in Nigeria, punctuating his sentences with short gasps of giggles.

"We were the big boys on the block," he said. "We were like bullies. We were going in there and dropping bombs on them. Some of the Iraqis would come up to us and say their family got hurt or whatever. I said, 'That's not on me, I'm just trying to get a paycheck.' "

***

AK-47 has to use the bathroom.

Already dressed in his green and white shorts - the colors of the Nigerian flag - Laleye dons his green and white robe with 10 minutes left before his fight and leaves the locker room, entourage in tow. To reach the bathroom, Laleye has to walk through the hotel lobby. He makes his way though the crowd of fight fans - people lined up to buy nachos at the concession stands, men in garish three-piece suits and high-heeled strippers who will carry the round cards during the fight.

The guys in the men's room are taken aback when Laleye enters and strides to a stall. An official from the Florida State Boxing Commission looks sheepish waiting outside the stall door until Laleye finishes. As Laleye exits the bathroom and heads back to the locker room, a fan asks, "Going to get 'em AK?" Laleye just smiles in response.

"You might think I'm a tough guy or whatever, but I get scared," Laleye says later. "I'm scared of everything just like you. I'm scared of being knocked out. I'm scared of being embarrassed in front of all of these people."

***

After his successful first experience in the ring, Laleye decided to stay in St. Petersburg. He fought for two years as an amateur and earned money working as a cashier at Burlington Coat Factory, a job he still does from time to time when he needs the money.

St. Petersburg is also where Laleye started to refine the ideas burgeoning in his mind. He has taken political science classes at St. Petersburg College, and plans to eventually earn a degree. He reads avidly and has developed strong opinions about the direction he thinks his country needs to go. He'll tell you that Nigeria is a major exporter of oil to the United States and shouldn't be poor.

"Africa has the most natural resources, so there should be nobody starving," he said. "We need people like me to go back and change that s---. There's cheaper labor in Africa than in Asia. Why are all the good companies going over to Asia to build their factories? Give us those sweatshops. We can work, too. We need that s---. China is like a world power right now because of all the sweatshops they have, all the manufacturing, all the technology."

He said investment is the key to success and wants to contribute.

"If black people don't do it," he said, "who's going to do it?"

Laleye hates the corruption in Nigeria and the large gulf between the rich and poor. He's frustrated when he sees the privileged driving around in Rolls Royces, Bentleys and Ferraris when roads aren't navigable and schools are lacking.

Once he becomes famous from his boxing career, he said, he wants to become a politician, return to Nigeria and change all that he sees wrong. He said he's already spoken to someone in the U.S. State Department about the feasibility of his idea.

The plan fits with the two sides of Laleye's personality. At the same schools where he beat up kids for their lunch money, he earned straight A's. The same person who says he was unaffected by war in Iraq and Afghanistan doesn't want his younger brother to turn pro because of the pressures inside and outside the ring.

When asked what would make him different than the other politicians who have tried and failed to end corruption in his country, Laleye said his outlook is different.

"I'm not greedy," he said. "I don't want a big house, I could care less. I don't want a big car, I could care less. ... In my head I'm already dead anyway, so I'm living every day like a gift."

***

Laleye enters the ring to the music of rapper Cam'ron. Opposing him is a guy from Atlanta named Troy Higgins who's a little wide in the middle. The opening bell rings and Higgins charges, grabbing hold of Laleye's arm.

Laleye eventually parries him and begins to box. An assistant trainer for Laleye is sent back to the locker room to get Vaseline for use between rounds. Laleye starts connecting blows to Higgins's body. Higgins staggers and falls, then wobbles to his feet. Laleye again pounds Higgins with body shots and the referee stops the fight - a technical knockout. Laleye has won in 1 minute and 42 seconds, earning his sixth victory. The trainer returns with the now-unneeded Vaseline and asks, "What'd he beat him so quick for?"

After Laleye drinks water, after he's toweled off and after his trainer cut the tape from his hands, he speaks about wanting more from the fight than the knockout he earned. He says he wants to go the distance as a boxer, to test himself and his abilities.

"I'd rather it be a war," he says.

And as a man, he wants to go the distance, too. He thinks of home, and he wants to fight.

Interested in more? Click here to see the related design project, "AK47."

Back to "West of 34th Street" | Back to "On the Beat" | Back to "Main Page"