Ghana’s Sarah Lotus Asare on Promoting Childhood Literacy, Cultural Awareness, and Female Agency Through Boxing

 

The West African nation of Ghana sustains its economy by virtue of exporting gems, crude petroleum, precious metals, cocoa beans, fruits and nuts. One other thing Ghana has a reputation for cultivating is world champion boxers, beginning with David Kotey (DK Poison), who floored and unseated WBC featherweight titleholder Ruben Olivares in 1975. Nine years later, Azumah Nelson, known as ‘The Professor’ and arguably the all-time greatest African boxer, joined the lineage of that very same title by knocking out Wilfredo Gomez in the second to last round while trailing the defending champion on two out of three scorecards at the time.

There was also Nana Konadu, Ike Quartey, Joshua Clottey, and, more recently, Isaac Dogboe, Joseph Agbeko, and Richard Commey, as well as several world title contenders like Roy Ankrah, Floyd Robertson, Ben Tackie, and Joshua Buatsi to name just a few. Some of these fighters, in addition to others, are featured in the pages of the illustrated storybook B For Bukom by Sarah Lotus Asare which takes the reader on an alphabetical tour of Ghana’s boxing heroes, heritage, and history. As you will soon learn in the process of getting to know Sarah, it’s very obvious that no one is better suited to the task. 

Described as “a Ghanaian boxing development advocate, storyteller, cultural curator, and one of the emerging voices redefining how boxing is viewed in Ghana and beyond,” Sarah is deeply rooted to the communities of Bukom and Jamestown specifically. B For Bukom was an innovation of hers that served the purpose of “ensuring that the legacy of Ghanaian boxing is remembered beyond championship titles and fight records,” says Sarah. “Boxing can serve as a pathway for confidence, identity, opportunity, and community transformation.”

Sarah followed up the publication of B For Bukom by curating Atswele Sane: Aspects of Ghana’s Boxing Heritage, an exhibition which ran from August 20 to Sept. 2, 2025 at the University of Ghana’s Museum of Archaeology and Heritage Studies that she says, “brought together photographs, stories, historical elements, and lived experiences from Ghana’s boxing spaces, helping audiences see boxing as an important cultural and historical institution rather than simply a combat sport.” Boxing means so much more to Sarah than merely as an intellectual subject. It is a societal touchstone and a vital component to her genetic code.    

(Sarah and a young boxer with Azumah Nelson at WBC Cares event)

“In terms of my experience growing up in Ghana, it was pretty much like every other person’s upbringing. For most of my childhood, the focus was to be in school, to study and things of that sort,” Sarah tells me. What wasn’t so commonplace about Sarah’s childhood was having boxers like Bastie Samir, Duke Micah, and many others pay regular visits to her home. This was because they came to sit beneath the learning tree that is Sarah’s father, Dr. Kwesi Ofori Asare, longtime head coach of the Ghanaian National Boxing Team, called the Black Bombers, and technical director of the Ghana Boxing Federation (GBF), who continues to operate out of the renowned Wisdom Boxing Gym in Accra. “One of my fondest memories as a child is when my dad came back from the Beijing Olympics. And because he was in Beijing, you know, they have a lot of electronics there,” recalls Sarah. Her father brought back a sampling of the latest technological devices for the family, she says, “and he even gave me a smartphone at that time.”

Coach Asare’s accomplishments as the trainer of the Black Bombers are as remarkable numerically as they are inspirational in a way that transcends sports. “He’s been in four Olympic cycles, won Ghana’s only—and Africa’s only—bronze medal with Samuel Takyi in 2020. This year they are preparing to go to the Commonwealth Games and I would say that currently the professional boxers that we have in Ghana that are doing well, definitely 99 percent of them have gone through his hands at some point,” says Sarah.

“He’s done so much, won over 150-something medals in different colors—gold, bronze, silver—and that is the quantifiable aspect,” Sarah explains. “But I think that the one thing that people have to see as his legacy is how he’s so affected many people’s lives in the form of being a coach and also by training coaches. Because several of the boxers that come to the gym, maybe they start training there around the ages of six and five and several of them, they have very little supervision or guidance at home and the gym is the place that they get all the discipline and even the focus on life that they need.”

(Sarah with her father, Coach Kwesi Ofori Asare)

While Sarah’s journey into the boxing world began by pursuing a scholarly route which in turn led her down an administrative path, her sister initially took a hands-on approach in the literal sense. “My dad actually did not want me to get involved in boxing,” she says. “He taught all of us but at the beginning stages, my younger sister, she was the boxer. She had the opportunity to be mentored by people like Lesley Sackey. She’s a British Ghanaian boxer. And a number of high profile Cuban coaches she had an opportunity to work with but when she went to senior high school, she decided not to do boxing. She’s currently in law school,” Sarah informed me. “The fundamental aspect of how I came into the sport was basically as an academic assignment to find out the reason or the rationale behind why people box and when I first started off, people did not know I was affiliated to my dad. So they would relate to me on a very neutral level and some would answer my questions, some would not, but I was resilient.”

Sarah’s resilience paid off in many ways, not the least of which was gaining a deeper appreciation for the immeasurable value placed upon her father by members of the boxing community and, even more importantly, the Ghanaian community. “I would say my dad played a very important role in me wanting to work in sports especially when I started doing a lot of my research. Speaking to different people about key players in the sport, his name kept coming up and those moments I felt very proud, like having such a person as my dad because people held him in very high regard and he had impacted the lives of so many people,” she says.

“As I was speaking to different people, not even people from his own club but people from different clubs, coaches, referees, officials, different people, and at the time, they didn’t even know who I was. So they were being very honest, looking at the work that he was doing and how he’s able to impact the life of other people. And as a person, I’m also interested in social work,” Sarah continues. “I felt that boxing would give me this avenue to be able to impact the lives of other people, especially seeing that my dad is able to do that. Even up to now he’s one of the people I look up to because every day he’s always put a human face to everything. He doesn’t look at boxers just as projects that need to be featured. He always tries to make sure that whatever he does with the fighter, he’s able to change their life and also impact those around them.”

Sarah’s term paper on boxing for the University of Ghana, where she graduated with a BA and MPhil in Archaeology and is working towards her PhD in Museum and Heritage Studies, provided the point of entry to what has evolved into a lifelong commitment to the sport she has grown up around and learned to love with a passion that matches her father’s. Over the course of time, she took on an increasingly active role within the Wisdom Boxing Gym which Sarah says, “focuses heavily on youth development, athlete visibility, women’s participation in sport, and creating opportunities for young boxers both locally and internationally” through initiatives that merge boxing with education, media, tourism, and community development.

As Organizing Secretary for the Greater Accra Boxing Association (GABA), Sarah originated the Girls Box Tournament and the Books B4 Hooks program. Footballer turned martial artist and boxer Janet Acquah, who hails from the impoverished fishing village of Chorkor, caught Sarah’s attention when she competed in the inaugural Girls Box event. After being scouted by Asare, Janet would go on to become the first female boxer to medal at the All African Games and win a bout representing Ghana at the 2024 Olympic qualifiers in Senegal. Acquah has one professional MMA fight under her belt (a 2025 submission defeat to Felista Mugo) and is planning a transition to the paid ranks in boxing.     

(Sarah with Janet Acquah)

Sarah credits GABA official Alex Ntiamoah Boakye with thinking up the catchy name Books B4 Hooks, but otherwise it was her brainchild and pet project. “When I started working with the Greater Accra Boxing Association and I was given the opportunity to host events that I cared about, I wanted every event that I do to have a social impact aspect to it,” she related to me. “So, Books B4 Hooks came about when I did under-15 and under-17 tournaments and I gave them books before because I wanted to encourage the boxers at the time to go back to school, or to stay in school for those that were in school. Some of the things that we did at the time with my team was to hold the events on the weekend so that the boxers that are in school can participate. And also, in addition to the prizes, the boxers were given scholarships to cover their tuition and also equipment. Things that would foster the importance for them to know that you don’t only have to be a boxer that stays in the gym all day but you also have to learn the basic things of reading and writing. And it’s a principle that I live by.”

Which brings us back to Sarah’s book, B For Bukom. “It’s something that came up from the research that I did speaking to the different people. I realized that there are so many people in the sports who have impacted Ghana boxing over time from the coaches, the officials, the referees, but often the boxers are the only ones that people really recognize. So I was like, okay, how can I translate my research to a form that can be available to everyone? Something that children can read, something that parents can read to their children?” she mused. “And basically the book uses each of the alphabets to highlight some of the achievements and contributions that different individuals have done for the sport. For instance, when you go to the letter S, I have the Samir brothers. These are three brothers (Bastie, Issah, and Shakul) who have all represented Ghana at the Commonwealth Games and all qualified for the Olympics to represent Ghana. They’ve all won medals for Ghana at various tournaments.”  

As mentioned above, Sarah set out with B For Bukom to achieve more than just honor Ghana’s great boxers, but to also acknowledge those whose guidance was instrumental in making the fulfillment of their dreams possible. “What I did was to create a table where I’ve written down the names of each of the boxers that are really celebrated, and I put by them the coaches that trained them and the clubs that they are from. So that when people see these boxers, they don’t just see them in isolation but they also see the individuals that were behind them, that helped with their successes that are often not recognized.”

Why did Sarah choose to tell the history of Ghanaian boxing in the form of a children’s chapter book? To her, the answer is elementary. “Because I wanted it to be something that educates young people right from the beginning. Because boxing is an important aspect of our heritage here. And I also want to encourage children to read. So by putting it in the form of reading, it’s just putting something that they love in an activity of reading,” Sarah says. “The book is designed to educate Ghanaian children beyond boxing because it gives you real life instances for you to see things that individuals have done, things that you can apply in your life even when you are not taking the part of boxing. It shows things of resilience, family ties, commitments, passion, and discipline. And pioneership, like all of these, are values that we can all benefit from.”

Currently serving as Executive Secretary of WBC Cares Africa, as well as the Ghana Boxing Federation where her duties include not only organizing grassroots movements but supervising the National Boxing Team coached by her father, Sarah also manages Theophilus Allotey, who is undefeated as a professional at 14-0 (11KOs), holds the WBO Africa bantamweight, Ghana National super-flyweight, UBO Continental super-flyweight, and WBO Global super-flyweight titles, and is ranked #10 worldwide in the 115-pound division. 

Sarah additionally lays claim to the distinction of being Ghana’s first female matchmaker, “helping organize and support professional boxing events in a traditionally male-dominated space,” as she details her personal responsibility. She is understandably gratified by the reality that her prominent role in Ghanaian boxing “represents a growing shift toward greater female representation in the sport’s leadership structures” in addition to the fact that she has become “known for advocating for safer, more inclusive, and development-focused boxing conversations” and “emphasizes discipline, technical development, mental strength, and cultural significance over violence and sensationalism.”

There is an African proverb that says, “A single tree cannot make a forest.” By helping nourish the cultural landscape of her beloved motherland through boxing, reading, community engagement, and female empowerment, Sarah Lotus Asare is doing more than her part to ensure that Ghana stands together and stands strong as a formidable presence on the world stage. Just like the proverbial forest—a welcoming environment for everyone to explore, learn about, and learn from.  

(Sarah and team celebrating a victory with Theophilus Allotey)

A Brief History of Women’s Boxing Trading Cards—Take Two

Like most writers, I am my own harshest critic. Setting my ego aside has never been a problem. Nor is admitting when I’m wrong or that my work isn’t up to snuff. In fact, I can beat myself up pretty good when the occasion calls for it. This happens to be one of those times.

Having said that, it wasn’t that I was factually incorrect about anything I wrote in my first part of this series—except where the title is concerned. I originally hedged my bets by calling it A Brief But Pretty Much Complete History of Women’s Boxing Trading Cards So Far but wound up dropping the “Pretty Much” from the final version, mostly for the sake of brevity but also because I was confident in having done my due diligence in terms of conducting research and relying on basic knowledge.

Mine wasn’t an egregious sin of vanity, assuming I knew it all, but a modest sin of omission, learning after the fact that there was more to the story than I thought. Still, a sin is a sin no matter the intent and must be atoned for. Accuracy and accountability should be two of the hallmarks any halfway decent writer strives toward.

I hadn’t intended to revisit this topic until enough new trading card releases provided material sufficient for a sequel. But who knows when that will be. The sports card industry is going through a massive crisis of identity, credibility, and sustainability at the moment and, come what may, will always prioritize baseball, basketball, football, hockey, soccer, mixed martial arts, hell even golf and auto racing above boxing which, admittedly, has slowly degraded into an increasingly niche sport with women’s boxing being a niche within a niche like one of those Russian nesting dolls. With that in mind, I figured this would be an opportune time to tidy up the unfinished business carelessly left behind after I got through with the first installment.

Let’s start with Laila Ali, whose rookie card was produced in Germany for a 2000 edition of Bravo magazine, as I wrote about in part one. Which is true. I think. Allow me to explain. In my subsequent efforts to track down the Laila rookie card for my personal collection, I stumbled across three eBay listings that raised my eyebrows like Groucho Marx.

One was for a complete perforated twelve card sheet—also featuring the likes of basketball stars Dirk Nowitzki and Dennis Rodman, and tennis legend Pete Sampras—just as it was originally presented in the magazine. If so inclined, you are welcome to very carefully rip along the dotted lines to separate the individual cards from one another. Very cool, but no thanks. Especially not for approximately 180 USD. Another listing was for the Laila Ali card alone, which I happily purchased and had sent over from Germany for roughly twelve bucks. I wasn’t even hit with the extra tariff fee I was warned I would have to pay before it would be released to me upon delivery.

The third offering was what sent me plunging headfirst down a rabbit hole I still haven’t managed to find my way out of. It’s one of those bulk listings I rarely, if ever, bother paying any mind to, the kind which prompts the potential customer to choose from dozens of items that appear on a drop down menu for your perusal. The fact that it turned up as a search result for the very uncommon Laila Ali German Bravo magazine card was reason enough to not totally disregard this listing (if only out of curiosity, since I had already found and bought it), but there was one noticeably unique aspect to it that necessitated further research.

This lot of cards was described as originating from the Polish version of Bravo magazine, ranging from 1998 to 2004. Not exactly being well-versed on the subject of European pop culture periodicals, my kneejerk reaction was to assume that the only difference between the German and Polish publications was likely the mother tongue into which each was translated. Well, you know what they say happens when you assume. I’m honestly still not sure if the content of these sister versions of Bravo are identical other than the language in which they’re written, but the cards are most definitely unique to each specific edition. Evidently Bravo magazine has also established a global presence in Brazil, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Mexico, Portugal, Spain, Romania, Russia, and Serbia throughout the course of a lengthy history that traces back to the 1950s. Who knew? Not me. But I digress.

The Polish Laila Ali card is smaller than your regulation trading card, similar in size to the tobacco cards of old, and was part of a set designed to look like a deck of playing cards. In other words, completely different from the German Bravo card. But that wasn’t all. Listed just below the Laila Ali card was one of Jacqui Frazier-Lyde. This was an even bigger revelation, since Jacqui has no other card. That I know of. Until just a few weeks ago, I had no idea that these cards existed. Naturally, I had to have them.

Regarding the confusion as to whether this Polish Bravo card or the German one is Laila’s true rookie, the listing identified the Ali and Frazier cards as having been manufactured in 1998. There’s no way this can be accurate, as Laila didn’t make her pro debut until October 1999 and Jacqui not until four months later, in February of the following year. Oddly enough, another Laila Ali Polish Bravo card popped up for sale on eBay just a few days later, this one claiming it to be from 1999, which further muddies the waters. 1999 would work for Laila Ali, just barely, but not for Jacqui. Because the two cards were created and released in tandem, it makes perfect sense to me that they date to 2001, the year Ali and Frazier fought one another. I’ve tried in vain to validate my hunch. No trading card database or interweb search has turned up any information whatsoever to either confirm or refute my best educated guess and the aforementioned eBay listings are no help as they offer contradictory origin stories. Hopefully one of these days I’ll discover the definitive answer I’m looking for. Until then, who’s to say?

But wait, there’s more. When I received my package from the seller, there were indeed two cards inside with one being Laila Ali. The other, however, was not Jacqui Frazier-Lyde. Interestingly enough, the card inserted on the reverse side of the plastic protector depicted Iwona Guzowska, who fought from 1999 to 2003 (9-1, 2 KOs) and earned the distinction of being Poland’s first female world champion boxer, winning three belts at featherweight. By process of elimination, Guzowska’s 1999 start date also helps dispute 1998 as the year these cards were supposedly manufactured according to the seller.

Now my interest was piqued to an even higher degree. I immediately sent the seller a message to notify him of the shipping error. To his credit, he was genuinely apologetic and promised to make things right by sending the Frazier card as well as a postage-paid envelope for me to return the incorrect one. I informed him that I would actually like to keep the Guzowska card, so we worked out a side deal for that one in addition to another he had also not gotten around to listing yet of Agnieszka Rylik. Nicknamed ‘Lady Tyson,’ Rylik fought out of Kolobrzeg, Poland and went 17-1 (11 KOs) in a relatively brief career that spanned just five years, from 2000 to 2005 (shooting yet another hole in the 1998 and 1999 theories as to these cards’ year of origin), during which she was a three-time holder of the WIBF super-lightweight world title. All things considered, the seller’s innocent mistake turned out to be a happy accident as well as a valuable learning experience for me.

We’re not through with Bravo magazine quite yet. Like I mentioned earlier, and in part one of this story, the Laila Ali rookie card (?) was produced in the German version in the year 2000. Although my research into Bravo failed to shed light on the Polish cards of Laila Ali and Jacqui Frazier-Lyde, not to mention their Slavic counterparts, it did reveal the existence of another that had flown under my radar for nearly a quarter-century. Featured in the 2001 Bravo magazine sports card set issued for the German edition was a homegrown superstar in Regina Halmich. Deutschland’s first female world champion, Halmich was boxing’s original million dollar baby, having earned a reported €10 million throughout the course of her thirteen-year hall of fame career (54-1-1, 16 KOs).

Regina Halmich and Mia St. John have a few things in common. Both were world champion boxers, both were Playboy cover girls, and both have trading cards. In addition to the 2007 Upper Deck Spectrum of Stars, 2011 Leaf Muhammad Ali, and 2024 Topps Chrome cards of St. John that I noted in part one, she was also featured in the overlooked 2010 Razor Pop Century and 2011 Leaf Award Winners sets. Mia has also been objectified several times in the Benchwarmers series, a brand of trading cards which superficially fetishizes women and is therefore one I don’t care to collect. But to each their own.  

Our globetrotting effort to tie up loose ends in the world of women’s boxing trading cards leads us now to the Land of the Rising Sun where we add another stamp to our imaginary passport and thumb through a stack of back issues of BBM (Base Ball Magazine). This Japanese publication began producing sets of trading cards in 2008 that extended beyond the confines of the baseball diamond and into other sporting venues, including the boxing ring. Female prizefighters Nana Yoshikawa (aka Nana Nogami, a short-term WBO flyweight world champion), Satsuki Ito (spelled Itoh on her cards), Tomomi Takano (a former world title challenger who fought five times in 2025), and Yuko Kuroki (a two-weight world champion at 102 and 105 who dropped a split decision to Sarah Bormann last November) were featured on multiple cards in BBM sets called Real Venus and Shining Venus between 2009 and 2017, alternately depicting the women in boxing gear and stylish casual wear.

Boxing and MMA crossover fighters Holly Holm, Cris Cyborg, and Claressa Shields were discussed in part one for having cards dedicated to their appearances in either the octagon or the squared circle or, pertaining only to Shields and Cyborg, both. One name that failed to cross my mind was ‘Meatball’ Molly McCann, the cage fighting combatant who is signed to Eddie Hearn’s Matchroom Boxing and won her fourth prizefight in impressive fashion over Ashleigh Johnson a mere two weeks after part one of my story was published. Dating back to her first card in a 2021 Panini set, ‘Meatball’ Molly has had her likeness adorn a plethora of rectangular cardboard as a UFC competitor, including nostalgic throwbacks to the old Rated Rookie cards and Studio portrait designs from the Donruss junk wax baseball sets I grew up collecting.     

Speaking of Cris Cyborg, in part one I wrote about how the one and only boxing card she has is the Hit Like a Girl insert which comes from Leaf’s 2025 Women of Sport. I neglected to mention Hilary Swank, who obviously isn’t a boxer but did play one on the silver screen, which qualified the Million Dollar Baby star for inclusion in the same subset.

Portrayed by skateboarder turned actor Jason Lee in Kevin Smith’s 1995 movie Mallrats, Brodie Bruce acknowledges his ignorance upon learning that very morning that none other than Stan Lee is doing a signing at his beloved comic book shop in the local mall that same day by lamenting, “I must be slipping in my old age.” My reaction was pretty much the same when I found out only recently that the pride of El Paso, prizefighting siblings Jennifer and Stephanie Han, were featured in the second series of Zia Boxing cards, created by John Suazo of Albuquerque and released last September. Because they are independently manufactured and distributed, with no Zia Boxing website or secondary marketplace options available to purchase them, I have reached out to Suazo via email and social media about obtaining the cards with no reply at all as of this writing.

With that, we conclude this chapter in the saga of women’s boxing trading cards, one which will unquestionably continue to develop. You learn something new every day if you look in the right places or, just as often, in the wrong places too. Until next time…