Fighting for the Lord

His ring record was impressive. At 16 he was the youngest amateur heavyweight boxing champion in the country. Of the 28 professional heavyweight fights

under his substantial belt when he retired at the age of 27 Jimmy Abbott had won 25 on knockouts and lost three on points, without ever being knocked down.

He’d put an end to Kallie Knoetze’s career by knocking the South African heavyweight champion, ranked fifth in the world, right out of the ring to deprive him of his title in the first round. But the public loved to hate him, with every appearance in the ring being greeted by jeers and catcalls.

Abbott was larger than even a heavyweight boxer should be, and the press christened him the ‘Dancing Doughnut” and the ‘Bouncing Blimp”. His out-of-the-ring shenanigans also attracted attention, as did the ministrations of his father, an

interfering ex-boxer who was not known for his diplomacy.

When Abbott fought Eddie ‘The Animal” Lopez in Durban the journalists started sharpening their pencils. First there was an uproar when Abbott senior unexpectedly brought Jimmy’s wife down to Durban, where she discovered that her husband was ensconced in a local hotel suite with a girlfriend. The ugly scene that followed made front-page headlines.

Then, in the ring, a battered Abbott returned to his corner between rounds to be reduced to tears when his father launched a secondary barrage of blows upon his head for not fighting properly. I ask him about the incident and he laughs. ‘Hey, you remember that? He gave me a lekker couple of smacks in my corner. He was fighting outside with other people while I was fighting in the ring. That was one of the fights I lost on points.” Boxing was interesting in those days.

But things are different for 42-year-old Abbott now. The man who started out as a railway ticket examiner and went on to be a world-ranked boxer despite his unprepossessing physique is now a pastor and faith healer with the Apostolic Faith Mission. He’s reduced his weight from 310kg to 140kg, and spends his time spreading the word of God.

Abbott says that his fate was preordained. ‘My mother made a promise on the day that I was born that she would give the child inside her to the Lord. My father had hit her, and she was lying there in her blood begging God to let her child live. She gave me to the Lord when I was born. Later on my wife started praying that I would come to the Lord, and God changed my life.”

So what triggered the transition from sinner to saint? ‘After I gave up boxing I became a professional wrestler, known as The Viking. One day I was sitting thinking about it, and I realised it was all false. Wrestling is the biggest lie on earth. It’s a joke — rubbish.

We’d sit in the dressing room and plot who was going to win, then we’d go out and wrestle and the crowds would go crazy. I couldn’t live with myself like that and that’s when the Lord started speaking to me.”

So, cheating on your wife was okay, but cheating the public wasn’t? ‘Well, I wasn’t cheating very much on my wife. But, you see, when you’re wrestling you always have fans running after you, mainly women.”

Sadly, Abbott’s 24-year marriage to Carrie now seems over. The wife who forgave his love for other women couldn’t handle his obsessive love for God and left earlier this year.

‘She couldn’t take all the church and the miracles and things. She prayed for me to change and work for the Lord, but now I’m doing that, with all the miracles and wonders, she’s not happy. She’s my heart’s desire after the Lord, and I’d love to have her back, but if she interferes with my work I’ll carry on on my own.”

Miracles and wonders? When I first met Abbott a couple of years ago he told me that he was ‘curing the sick, healing the lame and raising the dead”. The question begs to be asked. ‘That’s it!” he enthuses. ‘I’ve prayed for four people who were certified dead, laid my hands on them and prayed, and God restored their lives!”

It turns out that none of the four was, strictly speaking, actually dead at the time of the healing, but all had apparently been written off by doctors and recovered after Abbott’s prayers. Abbott also travels to prisons around the country preaching to

inmates and was the first person to baptise prisoners.

This sparks a memory, and I ask about his brother whom I remember reading was convicted of murder recently. ‘Oh, my two brothers,” he says. ‘Ricky and Charlie are both in for murder — Charlie’s served about six or seven years already and Ricky was convicted this year. But I can tell you, they’ve changed. They’ve met the Lord Jesus Christ.”

Abbott’s not really interested in boxing anymore — he thinks that it’s become too much like wrestling, with hype and money dominating the numerous championships — but he can be fiercely protective of his religious convictions. Three years ago he challenged the speaker of the Eastern Cape legislature to a round in the ring after he said that Jesus Christ was a communist.

‘He never came back to me,” says Abbott. ‘I would have made an example of him using the word of God. But if he’d put the gloves on I’d have clobbered him to hospital.” Would that have been wise? ‘I suppose not — people would have said that Jimmy Abbott hadn’t changed one bit. I also took on that singer, Steve Hofmeyr. He called my Jesus Christ a loser and said that if Bart Simpson was God he’d have created a better world than God did.” Hofmeyr wisely didn’t respond.

One man who could get Abbott back into the ring for a full go is Mike Tyson. ‘I’d love that,” he says. ‘I’d train for a good fight and every time I hit him I’d preach the word of God to him.”

So does the man the public loved to hate feel more loved nowadays? ‘Oh yes. What I’m doing now is a hundred, a thousand times, better than anything I ever did before. Some still hate me, but they all remember me.”