Boxing is the black sheep of the sport, says Hebert Conceição

Black, poor and boxer.

It is for these three characteristics that Hebert Conceição, gold medalist at the Tokyo Games in the middleweight category, identifies himself. And for all three he’s already felt discriminated against.

“Boxing is the black sheep of sports,” he tells leaf. “Because it’s a sport played mostly by humble, simple people.”

“When I give an interview chatting calmly, chatting beyond sport, about general knowledge, people are even surprised that I am a boxer. In their minds, they think that a boxer has no ability to communicate, to be intelligent”, completes the Olympic champion.

Historically, boxers come from the periphery. Many are immigrants and/or black. In Brazil, for example, the entire boxing team that went to Tokyo started fighting in social projects. Robson Conceição, the first Brazilian Olympic champion boxer, was raised by a solo mother and worked as a street vendor and bricklayer’s assistant to help his family before making his career in the sport.

Hebert says that he feels discrimination against boxing even within the sporting environment, mainly by athletes from other countries, who despise the sport.

Born in the neighborhood of Pau de Lima, in Salvador, Bahia, he recalls that, in his childhood, “because he was poor, he was treated as a mere dreamer”. As if, starting from the place where he was born, success was possible only in the form of an illusion.

Not that achieving sporting glory has completely transformed his reality.

“Sometimes, at the airport, I get into the premium departure queue and an employee comes in and says ‘That’s not your queue.’ I say ‘why?’ He: ‘Because that’s the common one.’ When I say I’m premium, the guy is surprised and apologizes. But you don’t see him approaching someone with a tie, jacket and straight hair,” he says.

The boxer remembers that, as a child, he never went hungry, but there was no money left in the family either.

He says that he was always bigger than his friends and, when he was a kid, he was a troublemaker. He lived on the street and, playing football (he’s a fanatical fan of Bahia), got into a fight.

I watched the UFC and wanted to be a fighter. He started with jiu-jitsu, went through capoeira and, still focusing on mixed martial arts, entered boxing. But after stepping into the ring with the gloves on for the first time, he never wanted to let them go.

“At 15, I already had commitments that other friends didn’t have. I studied and worked in a bakery, because my parents couldn’t earn R$100 a month to pay for transport, tennis and gloves for me to train. When I was Brazilian champion [aos 19], I started getting a scholarship and was able to stop working and even help out at home,” she says.

Hebert never hid the importance of the homeland in his life. In Japan, he joined his fights to the sound of “Madiba” —a song by Raimundo Bida and Marquinhos Marques that makes reference to Nelson Mandela—, sung by Olodum.

At the Tokyo Olympics, the Northeast played an unprecedented role in Brazil, bringing four gold medals.

But both Hebert and many of his countrymen had to leave the region to reach the sport’s elite. In the case of the boxer, he left Salvador in 2017 and went to São Paulo.

“Unfortunately, northeastern cities, even capitals, do not have the purchasing power that those in the Southeast and South have. There comes a time when we need large structures. I am happy to have been welcomed in São Paulo, but I really wanted to , having developed my entire career here [na Bahia], without having to be away from the family for so long,” he says.

He says he missed his family, but he never lost focus, nor did he change his way of being —”at 7 degrees, I would wake up singing. There were quieter people who didn’t like it very much,” he laughs.

He earned the nickname Bocão not only for his wide smile, for saying what he thinks, being talkative or playful. But because, internally, he became the guy who spoke up when other athletes were afraid to do so. And he intends to continue like this, even to defend his own livelihood.

“Who criticized boxing [nos Jogos] must have been moved too. Boxing proved it’s giant, it was the most victorious sport in Brazil. Anyone who wants him out of the Olympics will have to sit and wait,” he replies.

The modality will be at the Paris Games, in 2024, but it could be left out of Los Angeles-2028 if it doesn’t solve internal governance problems. While he intends to fight for boxing’s permanence in the Olympic program, Hebert himself will distance himself from that circuit: the boxer has just entered the professional category.

In sport, Olympic boxing is considered amateur and has its own circuit, separate from the professional one, where, as in the UFC, there is more money.

Hebert doesn’t hide that he wants to be at the Paris Games, but the financial outlook and the possibility of spending more time in Salvador close to his family weighed in his decision — which follows the path of names like Robson Conceição and Esquiva Falcão.

“I want to stay in Salvador, I won’t lie. If I go to another Olympic cycle, I’ll return to São Paulo with happiness. But I see the financial side as a priority, I’m still building my financial life,” he said, even before the official announcement as a professional of the Probellum team.