As a spectator, I like to analyze the problems of one of the combatants, solve them and then verbally communicate my solutions to him
AJ Liebling, The Sweet Science
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–As a child, when I went to school in Barcelona, I suffered bullying. He had just arrived from Morocco. He barely spoke Spanish. I didn't understand the others, but I understood that they were insulting me – Moussa Gholam (28) tells me.
–And you defended yourself?
–Sometimes I got into fights. I didn't have an older brother to protect me or advise me. So, boxing helped me a lot.
–But the boxer cannot resort to boxing to defend himself. It's a basic rule, isn't it? –I observe him.
–I didn't get to use boxing, but knowing how to practice it gave me self-esteem. Self-esteem is essential in these situations. It was comforting to know that I had a gun, even if I wasn't going to use it. There are people who suffer bullying and have no self-esteem or weapons and end up committing suicide. And what do others do? They go and pay it with their parents. Or with other kids... I was ten years old when I stood up to another fifteen-year-old. And just by doing that, everything changed and I earned respect. They just stopped picking on me. Boxing is not for brutes or fools, but for strategists. Boxing is a game of chess.
By then, Moussa Gholam had already been boxing for some time. His friend Fares had brought him into that world. They shared gloves in some park, in El Born. Fares told him about Muhammad Ali and Roy Jones Jr. introduced him to that world. Moussa Gholam was very young when they put him to fight with Bilal, four years older than him.
“You're good at it,” they told him.
Months later, he appeared at Esport Rogent, Xavi Moya's (DEP) gym in El Clot: “You are very small. You are ten years old. "I can't let you box until you're 14. If you want, try karate or judo," Xavi Moya told him.
–But I wanted to box. Nothing, I continued playing soccer while I waited.
When he returned to Esport Rogent, Xavi Moya remembered him.
–I had to ask my parents for money to pay the fee. It was 40 euros a month.
For the parents, money hurt them.
–Go play football, like normal people –Yusef, the father, complained (but he paid).
The drift of the family had been an epic. They all come from Larache. Bahdia, her mother, had been the first to go to Ceuta, in 1998. She was thirty years old. She came with nothing and got a job as a waitress. Moussa and her father, a plumber, arrived four years later. Moussa does not forget the day when everyone finally met in Barcelona.
–I remember the bus trip, the streets of Barcelona, the contrast with my world, the security of knowing that my mother will not leave again.
(...)
A year passed and someone told him about the Gallego Prada gym (also a promoter), in l'Hospitalet. Karim, the devil, trained there. And Chaca, the rapper
–I was amazed by those names, they were champions of Spain and Europe. I came and met Emiliano.
(Emiliano is the manager of the gym; he is a thin man with a wise face who asks Gholam to turn off the lights when we leave and leave the keys in the grocery store on the corner).
Emiliano put the mittens on him and told him: “Well, you have a good hand, kid.”
Moussa Gholam was fifteen years old when he first fought. He did it at the Hesperia hotel in Bellvitge. He won.
–But there is no money in this –he tells me.
And that's why he drives an ambulance. She does it in the afternoons and evenings, from 6:00 p.m. to 2:30 a.m.
–And I'm not sleeping, I get up at eight to accompany the children (Islam and Dawud, four and three years old) and be with my wife, Leila, who is studying Pharmacy. A boxer of my level should train twice a day. He gives me one session. It shouldn't be like this, but it is.
–And how did you come up with the idea of the ambulance?
–When I played GTA (Grand Theft Auto), I liked to grab ambulances and practice rescues. Someone told me that I could study a Health Emergencies module. I could help others and they paid me on top of that. Sometimes I can even save lives...
(Next Saturday, Moussa Gholam faces Lunga Sitemela in Abu Dhabi: this time, the purse is important.)
