MUKONO, Uganda — In a forested area on the outskirts of Uganda’s capital, a few dozen young people gather around an improvised ring to watch two amateur fighters tangle in the mud.
The training sessions, complete with announcer and referee, mimic the professional wrestling competitions that teenagers regularly see on television. Ugandan enthusiast Daniel Bumba, known in the wrestling community as Bumbash, hopes that some of these wrestlers, many of them orphans, can do well and long enough to become professionals.
It’s a glimpse of a dream, with little else in practice. The ring is made of bamboo sticks tied with rope. And yet, young people pay 100,000 shillings ($26) as a commitment fee for the opportunity to lift themselves out of poverty in this agricultural region. This is approximately the equivalent of 10 days of work for an average construction worker, a significant amount.
Bumba, 35, said he has been a wrestling fan since he was a child. After college, he became what is known as a video jockey, offering lively commentary and translating WWE matches into the local Luganda language for other viewers.
Now he is a trailblazer, known only to a small group of fans in Uganda who follow professional wrestling on TV but who want to make it widely popular.
The community created by Bumba, known as Soft Ground Wrestling, has caught the attention of some professional fighters with its YouTube channel, which broadcasts some fights.
In February, the American wrestler whose ring name is Jordynne Grace shared a video of a wrestler smashing his opponent against bamboo sticks. “What are the chances of us contacting them and seeing if they want a real ring?” she wrote on social platform X.
Some Americans launched a GoFundMe call earlier this year in the name of Soft Ground Wrestling. The camp raised just over $10,000 and says Uganda’s amateur fighters “deserve a chance to showcase their talents to the world.”
In addition to purchasing a wrestling ring, any money raised will help Soft Ground Wrestling “continue leasing its land for the foreseeable future,” he said.
Soft Ground Wrestling pays $250 a month to use the four-acre property.
“The dream of this place is, first and foremost, to create awareness about the game,” Bumba recently told the Associated Press. “Personally, I want to become a brand ambassador for wrestling in East Africa.”
A first step is a planned wrestling academy, which he sees as a benefit to many children who might otherwise be idle or trapped in crime. Many of the young people in or around the ring in this village, 20 kilometers (12 miles) from Uganda’s capital, Kampala, have long since dropped out of school.
Ugandan authorities took note, initially with suspicion.
Arthur Asiimwe, co-founder of Soft Ground Wrestling, said security officials visited the community in March and questioned him and Bumba about their goals. Army officials wanted to know whether the group was involved in “dubious activities” and left after watching some fighting, he said.
Many of the 100 graduates have no clear idea of where wrestling could lead, although they hope to represent Uganda on a global stage. For now, some live in dorms where they have access to weightlifting equipment. Others leave the house to fight or watch.
They include some aspiring female fighters. They said they saw no obstacles to wrestling. There is a feeling of camaraderie among young people. In a fundraising video posted this year on YouTube, a young woman appeals for support to have “a wrestling ring for perfect matches,” while male colleagues watch in the background.
Daphine Kisaakye, a young woman who wrestled one recent morning, said she was first exposed to it in 2019 as a domestic worker watching matches on WWE television.
“It was incredible,” she said.
Bumba has yet to find suitable training facilities and health insurance for participants. Injuries are a concern. He said that all those who intend to fight receive months of training from him before they are allowed to venture into the ring.
One of the fighters, Jordan Ainemukama, said serious injuries were rare, but some members had minor incidents.
“So far I’ve never had an injury, a serious injury… Like, you get shocked and then you go to the clinic and then they prepare you for two or three weeks,” he said. “Then you come back.”
Ainemukama said he now knows how to land in the makeshift ring: “Our coach always tells us this, ‘Safety first’.”
This story originally appeared on ABCNews.go.com read the full story
