My final, and perhaps most unexpected, shock after arriving in September 1987 was discovering that boxing was considered entertainment.
At Mfantsipim School, Saturday nights were structured for leisure. There were movie nights. Records nights. Occasionally, stage plays.
Approved diversions within a disciplined calendar. And then there was boxing.
Officially sanctioned as entertainment. Unofficially, it became arbitration.
What the authorities permitted as entertainment evolved quietly into a mechanism for settling personal scores. Grievances that might otherwise have fermented in dormitories found expression under makeshift lights, with improvised referees and roaring spectators.
It was conflict resolution by gloves. Some bouts became legend.
1. Kwasi Forson vrs Bobby Scratch.
2. Wazenge vrs Maxism.
3. Cee Bubu vrs Zadok
4. Cee Bubu vrs Ayellow
5. Cee Bubu vrs Gbeetsatsu
These were not merely contests of strength; they were reputational audits. Pride entered the ring. So did dormitory allegiance.
I had my own solitary appearance in the entertainment ring. One fight. One controversial decision. I lost to my friend and brother, Kofi Dom. To this day, I maintain the scorecards required interpretation. History, however, records only the verdict.
Among the most formidable fighters of our era was Cee Bubu. He combined discipline, stamina, and a tactical calm that unsettled opponents before the first bell. In his corner stood Gbeetsatsu, supported by Fiifi Banson and me. Corners were not decorative; they were strategy units.
In Form 5, a succession plan emerged. Cee Bubu was to hand over the informal title to Gbeetsatsu in a choreographed fight, with the understanding that the belt would return to Cee Bubu upon his Sixth Form return. It was politics disguised as sport—legacy management on the hill.
Then came the breach.
On the morning of the bout, word reached us that Gbeetsatsu had been telling his dorm and classmates that he intended to beat Cee Bubu mercilessly. The narrative had shifted from ceremony to conquest. What we interpreted as confidence became betrayal.
Strategy was revised.
We advised Cee Bubu to play conservatively in the first round—absorb, observe, conserve energy. Then, in the second, to close the matter decisively.
He did.
What followed was less theatre and more reckoning. By the end of the second round, the choreography had collapsed. By the third, Gbeetsatsu did not answer the bell.
It was brutal. It was unforgettable. It was boarding school justice.
Looking back, boxing functioned as more than spectacle. It was hierarchy negotiation. Reputation management. Controlled aggression in a controlled environment.
In a school committed to producing gentlemen and world beaters, the ring offered lessons no classroom could fully simulate:
• That confidence must match competence
• That alliances matter
• That strategy outweighs bravado
• That betrayal has consequences
It was raw, yes. But it was formative.
We learned to take blows.
We learned to calculate risk.
We learned that crowds are fickle.
We learned that victory and humiliation can be separated by one round.
And somewhere between sanctioned entertainment and unofficial arbitration, boys rehearsed adulthood under the Saturday night lights.
Not always wisely, but always memorably.
- Read also
- Mfantsipim School @ 150 and Creech’s Mfantsipim Diaries: My First Shock
- Mfantsipim School @ 150 and Creech’s Mfantsipim Diaries: My second shock
- Mfantsipim School @ 150 and Creech’s Mfantsipim Diaries: Shock Number Three
- Creech’s Mfantsipim Diaries. My final shock
The writer is Philip Creech-Jones of MOBA 1992 (Mfantsipim Old Boys Association).
