O Meu Diário de Coimbra

For the love of Monstro

Uisma "Monstro" Lima, the current Super Welterweight IBO World Title holder, though born in Angola, was raised in Porto, Portugal and, as best I can tell, is the only Portuguese boxer to ever win a championship. The IBO, incidentally, founded by John Goormaghtigh, a Belgian lawyer and Holocaust survivor, is the International Boxing Organization, one of the lesser known boxing organizations. It’s barely recognized by the other boxing fiefdoms — the WBA, WBC, IBF, and WBO — but then, they barely recognize each other. Any wonder Jimmy Cannon once called boxing “the red light district of sports.”

The reason I bring this up is at the Coimba Festas ‘25 da Cidade e da Rainha Santa Isabel a few nights back, located on the west side of the Mondego River, instead of seeing one of those boxing machines with a small bag attached to a lever, which you see everywhere there’s cotton candy, ferris wheels, and odd, dangerous looking carnies, I saw this.

And this is why, I’m convinced, Portugal sucks at boxing and kids here grow up wanting to be Cristiano Ronaldo, Portugal’s most famous and irascible footballer, who still plays for the Portuguese nation team when he’s not making millions in the Saudi Pro League, and not Monstro.