Hollywood producer, investors back Nigerian traditional fighting league

Nigerian traditional boxing is set to get a boost on the global stage with backing from an African private investment firm and a Hollywood producer.

Silverbacks Holdings, a firm domiciled in Mauritius, invested late last year in Nigeria-based sports venture African Warriors Fighting Championship whose major product is Dambe, a centuries-old boxing sport indigenous to the country’s northern region. Sanford R. Climan, a former Universal Studios executive whose work included producing Martin Scorsese’s The Aviator, is joining Silverbacks as an advisory board member and will personally invest in the wrestling outfit, the investment firm said.

The move comes weeks after AWFC announced a partnership with UK-based sports streaming service DAZN to bring Dambe to a global audience.

Ibrahim Sagna, who heads Silverbacks, said AWFC’s appeal lay in its ability to reach a global audience who were familiar with other combat sports. “It is a sport that’s already commanding a massive appetite — UFC [Ultimate Fighting Championship], PFL [Professional Fighters League] — you see a trend. You check the valuation of those companies, there’s already a massive demand.”

“If you think about human nature in its essence, what were the Roman arenas? There’s always been an appetite for this. It’s just that now it’s commercialized at scale,” said Sagna.

AWFC founder Maxwell Kalu said the fighting league, which has around 300 fighters and has previously been sponsored by online betting company Stake, had amassed 900 million views across social media and partner platforms since its launch in 2019. He added that the largest audiences were in Nigeria, the US, and Brazil.