I’ve always been a fan of the archive photos of a young Nelson Mandela boxing, so I always wanted to draw up that side of his life. From what I can gather, he could hold his own as an amateur fighter and his appreciation for the sport stayed in character.
“I did not enjoy the violence of boxing so much as the science of it,” Mandela said. “I was intrigued by how one moved one’s body to protect oneself, how one used a strategy both to attack and retreat, how one paced oneself over a match.”