Larry Ekundayo (born Olanrewaju Ekundayo on 13 June 1982) is a Nigerian

professional boxer Professional boxing, or prizefighting, is regulated, sanctioned boxing. Professional boxing bouts are fought for a purse that is divided between the boxers as determined by contract. Most professional fights are supervised by a regulatory auth ...

. He held the African

welterweight Welterweight is a weight class in combat sports. Originally the term ''welterweight'' was used only in boxing, but other combat sports like muay Thai, taekwondo, and mixed martial arts also use it for their own weight division system to classify th ...

title from 2015 to 2016 and the IBF European welterweight title from 2018 to 2019.

Career

Ekundayo was born in

Lagos Lagos ( ; ), or Lagos City, is a large metropolitan city in southwestern Nigeria. With an upper population estimated above 21 million dwellers, it is the largest city in Nigeria, the most populous urban area on the African continent, and on ...

Nigeria Nigeria, officially the Federal Republic of Nigeria, is a country in West Africa. It is situated between the Sahel to the north and the Gulf of Guinea in the Atlantic Ocean to the south. It covers an area of . With Demographics of Nigeria, ...

on 13 June 1982. He started boxing for self defense at the age of 12. In 1998, he won the Nigerian Amateur Bantamweight Championship and participated in the

1999 All-Africa Games The 7th All-Africa Games (; ), also known as Johannesburg 1999 (), was a sport event held from 10 to 19 September 1999, in Greater Johannesburg, South Africa. 53 countries participated in eighteen sports. Netball was included as a demonstrati ...

South Africa South Africa, officially the Republic of South Africa (RSA), is the Southern Africa, southernmost country in Africa. Its Provinces of South Africa, nine provinces are bounded to the south by of coastline that stretches along the Atlantic O ...

. He made a career switch from bantamweight to welterweight and won the Nigerian Amateur Welterweight Championship in year 2000. He participated in the

2002 Commonwealth Games The 2002 Commonwealth Games, officially known as the XVII Commonwealth Games and commonly known as Manchester 2002, were an international multi-sport event for the members of the Commonwealth of Nations, Commonwealth held in Manchester, England, ...

Manchester Manchester () is a city and the metropolitan borough of Greater Manchester, England. It had an estimated population of in . Greater Manchester is the third-most populous metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, with a population of 2.92&nbs ...

, UK and finished as a quarter-finalist. In 2006 and 2007, he won the championship title of the London Regional Amateur Boxing Association (ABA) championship. As an amateur, he won 110 of 125 fights he was engaged in. Larry’s career as a professional boxer started in November 2012 when he defeated three boxers in one night to become the Light Middleweight Prizefighter champion in London. He was the first boxer in the competition to be given a £2,000 knockout bonus. On 30 October 2016, he defended his African Boxing Union’s Welterweight title by beating Ghanaian boxer, Joseph ‘The Double Horror’ Lamptey. On 13 July 2018, he won the IBF European title by defeating John Thain in London in a fight that lasted 12 rounds.

Professional boxing record

References

External links

Larry Ekundayo
on BoxRec. Nigerian male boxers 1982 births Living people Boxers from Lagos Yoruba sportspeople Welterweight boxers African Boxing Union champions Boxers at the 1999 All-Africa Games Boxers at the 2002 Commonwealth Games Commonwealth Games competitors for Nigeria African Games competitors for Nigeria 21st-century Nigerian sportsmen {{Nigeria-boxing-bio-stub