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Ike Quartey: My brother’s name did trick for me
Former World Boxing Association (WBA) welterweight champion, Ike Quartey, has recounted how his father, Robert Mustafa, advised him to adopt his elder brother’s name if he wanted to be a boxing champion.
Quartey, born Issifu Quartelai Quartey, revealed that he decided to use his brother’s name Isaac (Ike) throughout his professional career and that paid off.
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The 50-year-old boxer told Graphic Sports that his father, a court bailiff at the time, believed he could walk in the footsteps of his elder brother, who was the first Ghanaian to win an Olympic medal in 1986, if he adopted his name.
He said it was a motivation not to let his brother down anytime he entered the ring, and that gave him a psychological advantage over his opponents.
“It was a homage to my elder brother anytime I entered the ring to fight because I was bearing his name as a fighter,” Quartey revealed in an exclusive interview with Graphic Sports.
“Me adopting his name to fight was my father’s idea because he felt that was the only way I could be a boxing champion and it paid off in the end when I won the WBA title,” he noted.
Growing up in the streets of poverty-stricken Bukom in Accra, Quartey was the last child of 27 children of his father.
Quartey joined the famous Akotoku Boxing Gym at Bukom at age eight, with longstanding trainer, Daniel Oko Odamtten, being the lead trainer at the gym when the legendary Attuquaye Clottey died.
When asked why he opted to go into boxing, Quartey explained that he was motivated by the desire to surpass his elder brother’s fighting record.
“That was the only career in mind because I wanted to achieve more than my elder brother, who won a silver medal at the Olympics. In the end, I was glad I did,” he stated.
