Boxer picks up gloves, wins three straight tournaments

Esaa Al-Sahalman with his recently won hardware. Photo/Special.

Esaa Al-Sahalman started boxing when he moved to College Park, Ga. at the age of 17. Originally from Detroit, Mich., Al-Sahalman stated he was inspired by boxers like Tommy Hearns and the intense battle between Sugar Ray Leonard and Roberto Duran in Montreal. He decided that he wanted to learn how to box and competed on an amateur level for 15 years, winning a state championship at the 147 pound welterweight division in 1980, but he wouldn’t win a title again for 29 years.

“Prior to this summer, 1994 was my last fight,” Al-Sahalman, a Fayetteville resident for nine years, recalled. “It was in the regionals in Kansas City. I was 32 years old.”

He hung up his gloves at that point and walked away from the sport. Years later he read an article in The Citizen about a boxing gym in Tyrone and started working out with gym owner Scott Sebastian. There wasn’t an immediate desire to return to the ring, but it felt good to get back in shape. Southside Boxing gave Al-Sahalman a sense of camaraderie and a place to hit the bags and spar with others who wanted to train like a boxer. The gym eventually closed, but Al-Sahalman found Sebastian again a few years later at LA Boxing in Peachtree City. Soon, the student was a teacher himself, getting back into shape and sparring with students. He decided to enter a tournament.

“Last year I fought at the Ringside World Championships in Kansas City, the same place I had lost 14 years before,” Al-Sahalman stated. “I lost again, but I made a pledge to myself that I would win every tournament I entered from then on.”

He has been true to his word.

In three tournaments this summer, fighting in the Masters Heavyweight division, Al-Sahalman has been perfect. He won the Title Boxing Nationals, the Florida Platinum Gloves and the Ringside World Championships, the tournament title that had eluded him for 15 years.

Al-Sahalman doesn’t look like a heavyweight and admitted that a lot of the fighters he matches up with are bigger.
“I am faster though,” Al-Sahalman said. “Footwork has always been my strength and it has made the difference.”

In addition to stressing the importance of footwork to his students, Al-Sahalman also preaches the significance of desire.
“Napoleon Hill said ‘the starting point of all achievement is desire,’” Al-Sahalman said, adding that during training for his tournaments he listened to the audiobook of Hill’s “Think and Grow Rich” to and from work every day. Al-Sahalman is a systems analyst for Horizon Software International in Duluth. His desire and determination to enter and win boxing tournaments was infectious and his co-workers were swept up in his adventures, throwing parties after his wins, including one with a cake shaped like a boxing ring.

“They have been behind me 100 percent,” Al-Sahalman said. His family has been very supportive too, particularly his wife, Angela. He has three children, Djavan, 24, Ravi, 11, and Naji, 7.

Not only has Al-Sahalman received encouragment from his family and co-workers, but he has had the entire group at LA Boxing behind him as well. The students in his cardio boxing class every Monday, Wednesday and Friday were on his mind as he started pursuing his titles this summer, as was a student, Cody Rollins, he has been training individually for the past four months.

“I feel it is important to practice what you preach,” said Al-Sahalman. “I wanted to show my students that I could do this.”

Al-Sahalman turns 48 next month, but he is ready to enter any tournament that comes his way. There are plans to compete in a tournament in Columbus, Ohio but he wishes there was another one this weekend. Teaching three days a week and training before and after keeps him in shape and he knows that a positive mental attitude is just as important as anything he does in the gym.

As Napoleon Hill said, “When your desires are strong enough you will appear to possess superhuman powers to achieve.”