In two weeks Mohammed J. would step into the ring at the martial arts event Glory 83 in Essen, Germany. The 26-year-old from Bossche is seen as a promising talent in the kickboxing world. But last week he was arrested on suspicion of money laundering, drug and arms trafficking. He would also be on a death list because of a fight in the criminal environment. Who is J?
Kickboxing is his world. It’s all about low kicks, jabs and uppercuts. After attending a kickboxing training as a child, he decided to focus on martial arts. At the age of 13 he won his first match.
School was of secondary importance, at the age of 15 J. dropped out of pre-vocational secondary education. “I was the black sheep at home, because everyone with us has studied very well,” he said earlier in an interview with Vice.
“Because in the Netherlands you are obliged to go to school until you are 18, I was fined 3500 euros by the government. I collected that money from all sides. When I succeeded, I was free to focus only on kickboxing to focus.”
He considers his mother his muse. “Everything I do in my kickboxing career is to make my mom proud,” J. told Vice. “She is a top woman and I really owe everything to her, but I gave her a lot of headaches in the past. I was really a nuisance as a teenager.”
De Bosschenaar made a name for himself with the fighting organization Enfusion, where he signed a contract at the age of 16. After that he came out as a lightweight at Glory. The Destroyer is his nickname, his ambitions are great. “ My dream is to demolish everyone at Glory and take that title,” he said at the time.
“There was a lot going on in my life, but sport is really in my blood.”
A few years ago it became quiet around the kickboxer. He was out of circulation for a long time, among other things due to a community service order for a double assault, according to De Telegraaf.
On February 11, he would fight his first match in three years in Essen. “There was a lot going on in my life,” J. said a week before his arrest to Videoland during a Glory press conference. “I struggled with injuries and my motivation. But sport is really in my blood and I can’t stop.”
That ended when he was arrested last Thursday at his home in Den Bosch. According to De Telegraaf, the kickboxer was brought before the examining magistrate on January 24, who decided that he should remain in pre-trial detention for fourteen days longer. Mohammed J. must appear before the court on February 1, which will then decide whether he will stay in jail longer.
Sources to the newspaper report that the kickboxer is at odds with a criminal gang. He would have been involved in the theft of a large consignment of cocaine.
Several attacks in Den Bosch are said to be warnings intended for J. His father’s former butcher shop on Kapelaan Koopmansplein in Den Bosch was twice the target of an attack.
Shortly afterwards, a hand grenade also exploded at a gym on the Eendenkooi in Den Bosch. The Glory kickboxer trained here for some time. After this third ‘warning’, the fighter would have fled to Dubai.
READ ALSO: Glory kickboxer (26) from Den Bosch arrested for drug and arms trafficking