Born in war-torn DR Congo, boxing prodigy Jonathan Kumuteo overcame a serious skin condition to sign a major sports deal – and he’s not finished yet
WORDS GERSHON PORTNOI
These days, everything is sold as inspiring: going for a run, an Instagram shot of someone’s lunch, even the label description on a bottle of craft beer. Speaking to welterweight boxer Jonathan Kumuteo for an hour, however, genuinely is inspiring.
The young athlete has had to overcome real adversity in the shape of a painful long-term skin condition called hidradenitis suppurativa (HS), taking him to the very depths of his wells of strength and belief. So when he says that he’s unstoppable, and that it’s his destiny to become a champion, he has to be believed.
For Kumuteo – or JK to his mates and the boxing fraternity – the last five years have been a rollercoaster, not that his early years were straightforward either. Born in DR Congo in 1995, the country’s civil war forced him to move to Zambia before joining his father, an economics masters degree student, in London, when he was seven. ‘All I knew about the UK at the time was the BBC news,’ he says. ‘I remember seeing snow for the first time, that was just amazing. But the biggest difference was going to a multicultural school – we didn’t have that in Zambia.’
Instead of boxing, it was the discipline of the Sea Cadets that gave Kumuteo the platform for his future career. He was a medallist at the National Combined Regatta (the Cadets’ annual sailing and rowing contest), mainly thanks to his competitive streak. ‘Anything where I could be a winner, I always wanted to win, whether that was at school, on the PlayStation, or sport.’
That will to win eventually led him to boxing, when he finally gave in to a friend’s challenge to spar at his local gym. ‘Being the person I was at the time, I thought I was the best at everything,’ he admits. ‘The first time I walked into the gym it was as if I was at home. I instantly fell in love with the sport.’
A NEW HOME
The gym was Finchley ABC, home to champions like Anthony Joshua and Dereck Chisora. A year after finding his feet, Kumuteo was making progress when he discovered a mysterious growth under his arm. ‘It was about the size of a golf ball and if I put my arm down, it was so painful,’ he says. He tried to tough it out, but at the point where it felt like his underarm was ‘about to explode’, he was rushed to hospital for surgery. ‘I will never forget the shock factor of that
