Dwight Muhammad Qawi, who found a redemptive path through boxing, taking up the sport while in prison in the 1970s and becoming a world champion in two weight classes in the 1980s, died on Friday in Baltimore. He was 72.
His death, in a nursing home, was confirmed by his sister, Wanda King, who said he had been diagnosed with dementia five years ago.
At age 19, Qawi (pronounced KAH-wee) was convicted of armed robbery and incarcerated at Rahway State Prison in New Jersey. He joined the prison’s boxing program and was released in 1978 after serving five and a half years. Shortly after, while on probation, he was convicted of assault and battery.
Sentencing guidelines called for at least 15 years for a second offense, Peter J. Coruzzi, then a Superior Court judge in Camden, N.J., who sentenced Qawi, told Sports Illustrated in 1981.
Qawi began his professional boxing career with a win, a loss and a draw, having never fought as an amateur. His managers asked Judge Coruzzi for leniency, and he consented, sentencing him to five years of probation.
“I remember him standing in front of me, tears streaming down his cheeks,” Judge Coruzzi told Pat Putnam of Sports Illustrated. “I saw something in him. Fighters, judges, robbers, we’re all human. Perhaps we should all take a deeper look at our fellow man.”
(The judge possessed his own frailties. In 1982, he was convicted of accepting or soliciting $47,000 in bribes in exchange for giving lenient sentences, in cases not involving Qawi. He was disbarred in 1984.)
Given a second chance, Qawi, then known as Dwight Braxton before converting to Islam in 1982, channeled his aggressions between the ropes of a boxing ring. He returned to Rahway in September 1981, not as an inmate but as the opponent of a light heavyweight contender, James Scott, his former prison sparring partner.
The bout, broadcast on national television, went 10 rounds, and Qawi maintained control while winning by unanimous decision. After the fight, eager to get beyond the walls that once held him, Qawi hastily left the dressing room without showering, saying, “Man, I’m getting the hell out of here,” Larry Hazzard, the fight’s referee, recalled in an interview.
Three months later, in December 1981, Qawi fought a title match against Matthew Saad Muhammad, the World Boxing Council’s light heavyweight champion. By then, Qawi had improved his record to 15-1-1, but his payday was only $50,000, compared to the $425,000 that Saad Muhammad received, a sum set beforehand, for what was his ninth title defense.
The day before the fight, Qawi told Sports Illustrated that his pay was “an insult” but that he accepted it with a larger ambition in mind.
“People never gave me a chance for anything,” he said. “They forgot that I had been fighting all my life — in the street, because I loved it, and in prison just to survive, to get respect.”
Against the heavily-favored Saad Muhammad, Qawi won on a technical knockout in the 10th round and established himself as a champion.
“I don’t enjoy beating up people,” he said, “but I will do what I have to do.”
Dwight Edwin Braxton was born on Jan. 5, 1953, in Baltimore and grew up in Camden. His father, Charles Braxton, was a lumberjack and a forklift operator. His mother, Alice (Holmes) Braxton, ran the household for 13 children.
Relatively short for a boxer (5 feet 6½ inches) but powerful, Dwight became known in the boxing world as the “Camden Buzzsaw.” He reminded some experts of Joe Frazier with his brawling style, nearly always charging ahead.
He had considered trade school after prison, but a friend who had seen him fight on the streets thought he could become a boxing champion. After leaving prison, he trained in Frazier’s gym in Philadelphia.
“He was like a fire hydrant, short, stubby, hard as steel,” Henry Hascup, the president and historian of the New Jersey Boxing Hall of Fame, said in an interview. “He was a bull. Evander Holyfield once said that was his toughest opponent.”
After defending his W.B.C. light heavyweight title three times, Qawi lost a unanimous decision to Michael Spinks in 1983, saying that a broken nose and a deviated septum had left him hesitant in the ring.
In 1985, Qawi won the World Boxing Association cruiserweight title, knocking out Piet Crous of South Africa in the 11th round. That victory set up a 1986 fight against the rising Holyfield, a 1984 Olympic bronze medalist who was nearly six inches taller and almost 10 years younger than Qawi. In what Ring Magazine called the best cruiserweight bout of the decade, Holyfield won by a split decision.
Holyfield won more decisively by a fourth-round knockout in a 1987 rematch. Qawi told The Courier Post of Camden in 2003 that he had begun drinking at the time, at first to celebrate victory and later to dull the pain of defeat. He moved up to the heavyweight class in 1988 but was stopped in the seventh round by George Foreman.
By then, Qawi told The Courier Post, he was buying a fifth of whiskey a day. He entered an alcohol rehabilitation program in 1990, and after retiring in 1998 with a record of 41-11-1, including 25 knockouts, he became a drug and alcohol counselor at the Lighthouse, a recovery center in May’s Landing, N.J. Later, he worked as a counselor in Baltimore.
Qawi was inducted into the New Jersey Boxing Hall of Fame in 1997 and the International Boxing Hall of Fame in 2004.
Along with Ms. King, he is survived by two brothers, Thomas King and David Braxton; two sons, Dwight Ibn Qawi and Thomas Walls; and two grandsons.
“After he paid his debt to society, he became a great role model; through boxing he made something of himself,” Hazzard, the former referee and now the commissioner of the New Jersey State Athletic Control Board, said. “I tip my hat to him.”
Jeré Longman is a Times reporter on the Obituaries desk who writes the occasional sports-related story.
The post Dwight Muhammad Qawi, 72, Dies; Boxing Champ Got His Start in Prison appeared first on New York Times.
