Boxer Alex Kanaabi, who won a bronze medal at the Africa Zone 3 Championships in October, has died of poison, his family said Thursday.
Kanaabi won the light middleweight league title on Boxing Day-his last ring appearance before his abrupt death in the wee hours of Thursday. He was around 23.
News of his worrying health state first spread on WhatsApp groups around 6 pm. It was reported that he had been badly beaten by gangs, commonly known as Eggaali. Soon, videos showed him in an ambulance and later on a hospital bed.
Then followed photos of a young man with deep wounds in his lower back and lower abdomen. The first photo showed Kanaabi lying in a black t-shirt and black track pants with white stripes on the sides. As usual, he was dark skinned. And fleshy, with no signs of body wounds.
The other pictures showed a skinny, light-skinned man in tight jeans, red underwear, as medics dressed his wounds. The pictures did not show his face.
Despite the striking differences between Kanaabi’s first photo and the latter images, the post escalated the fear for his life as much as the narrative that he had been beaten and stabbed.
But a lady who told Daily Monitor that she is Kanaabi’s mother said the boxer died of poison. She said she had last seen him around 9 pm Tuesday when he went to sleep.
‘But he hadn’t been seen yesterday [Wednesday]. I returned from work at about 6 pm and I had a nap. Then the kids came and told me Alex is in his house but does not answer phone calls,’ she told us on the phone.
‘I went to his door and heard that he was breathing abnormally. That’s when we forced the door open. I saw volumes of foam in his mouth. He was motionless, one of his hands beneath his body. I called for a car to evacuate him.’
‘At Good Samaritan Hospital Kireka, he was not attended to. They told us to go to a facility that does thorough heart tests,’ the mother said.
‘At Healthstone Medical Centre in Banda, they put him on oxygen support, but there was no improvement. Then they referred us to Nsambya [Hospital].
There, the diagnosis revealed that Kanaabi was suffering from effects of a very strong poison.
‘Doctors said it had badly damaged his brain. That is why all the other organs were dysfunctional.’
Worse still: ‘They told us his chances of surviving are very minimal. ‘But if we try the ICU, you never know.” the mother quoted medics.
But there were no vacancies at Nsambya’s ICU.
‘We tried accessing nearby hospitals and failed. We ended up in Kiruddu [National Referral Hospital].
At Kiruddu, doctors tried to flush out the poison.
‘They drew lots of green stuff, and doctors said the poison was likely a pesticide.’
‘When he started urinating through a catheter, we got some hope. But the machines abruptly stopped. They tried something. But Alex was gone.’
News of his death started showing in WhatsApp groups after 3am.
Earlier on, a phone audio conversation between a seemingly young woman and a man who was one of Kanaabi’s first responders circulated on WhatsApp. The woman was giving updates from hospital and said ‘The doctors have told us he tried committing suicide.’
But Kanaabi’s mother ruled out the possibility of suicide. ‘I don’t believe he poisoned himself because I checked his room thoroughly and I saw nothing like evidence,’ she said.
We, however, could not engage her further, considering her emotional state and the fact that other people wanted to contact her at the same time.
Peak and drop
Ironically, 2025 was Kanaabi’s best boxing year. After switching from the welterweight division, he boxed his way back into the Uganda Boxing Champions League, winning light middleweight gold at the National Open Championship. In the final, he defeated Ashraf Mutaasa of Kibuli Mutajjazi 5-0.
He would go on to dominate the 71kg division in the league with crucial victories against the terrific Nerrick ‘Bulabe’ Tumusiime, and Depark Mawanda in the final on Boxing Day to emerge the 2025 light middleweight champion.
In October, Kanaabi made his Bombers debut, winning bronze at the Africa Zone 3 Boxing Championships in Nairobi. Sadly, he will never throw another jab.
His sudden death has evoked memories of Charles Kalibbala, aka Bala Geko, a rising star who died October 16, 2023, in Mulago Hospital after sustaining wounds in what some reported as a motor accident, though other sources called it assault.
BRIEFLY:
Name: Alex Kanaabi
Club: Nakawa
Lived in: Kireka
Honours: National Open, gold;
League, gold; Africa Zone III, bronze
Division: light middle
Died: January 8, 2026
Cause: poison