KIDS TRICKLE OUT OF THE SCORCHING JUNE AFTERNOON and into an old firehouse in Minneapolis’s Folwell neighborhood. There, a 43-year-old former welterweight champ and head coach of the Northside Boxing Club greets each one. He nods to a pair of older boys. Says “Hey” to another. When a girl of 10 or so enters, wearing a black T-shirt with a cat on the front, jean shorts, and white Crocs, he grows animated.
“She’s here!” he exclaims. “She’s here.”
They exchange fist bumps. He chants “She’s here” a couple more times. With each incantation, the young girl’s step lightens.
Though only 5 foot 9, Mohammed Kayongo is powerfully packed, still very much ripped. He moves with the grace of an athlete and looks the part in a gray Northside Boxing Club T-shirt, black sweats, and Nike slides. Once hyped as “The African Assassin,” he shows no malice in his bearing. These days, everyone simply calls him Moe. There’s a warmth in his eyes, a gentleness in his greeting—he grips a stranger’s hand with both of his—and an infectious spirit.
About 80 kids, ages 9–21, are enrolled in the Northside Boxing Club, a nonprofit that charges no membership fees. Anywhere from 15 to 40 young people show up each day. This June afternoon, just as summer vacation begins, four boys and four girls gather for an afternoon workout. While the girls work large tractor tires across the driveway—squat, lift, flip, repeat—Kayongo runs the boys through a series of drills with 20-pound sandbags on their shoulders. Up and down a staircase. Squats. Lunges.
Sweat beads on their brows. Lactic acid anchors their legs. “Let’s go to work!” Kayongo urges.
He’s offering encouragement, not barking—more guidance counselor than drill sergeant. The boys lift their pace.
Their response shows their respect, the impact he has on them. They know what he’s dishing out, and they’re eager for it. This is a boxing club. He’s conditioning them. Training them. But for far more than ducking a haymaker or landing a left-right combination. For life. Giving them the skills to be leaders themselves.
But it’s even more than that, ultimately.
“Everybody looks after each other,” says Kayongo. “They feel at home here.”
These kids are growing up in a neighborhood where shots fired are a fact of life. Two cousins from the NBC’s first class were both shot and killed. Everyone seems to know someone who’s overdosed. Prospects can look grim.
Until they look into the face of Moe Kayongo, where they see compassion, kindness, and confidence. When he turns those eyes on them, they feel seen. And when those eyes beam—when that wide smile ignites his face—they seem to feel it in their bones.
Kayongo runs the Northside Boxing Club with Phil “The Drill” Williams, another retired professional boxer. They’re backed by Ryan Burnet, restaurateur (Barrio, Bar La Grassa), real estate scion, and the one with the vision of a place for impoverished youth to learn the sweet science of boxing along with life skills.
What you see first upon walking through the doors of the old fire station is the elevated boxing ring. Kayongo and Williams teach the kids who come through those doors Black history, money management, business practices, and leadership skills. The club provides them with everything from meals to mentoring in a safe space, all with the aim of lifting them up to become the best versions of themselves. The gym’s stated mission is to teach “self-discipline, confidence, compassion, and respect to the youth of North Minneapolis by offering free boxing training, physical fitness, and nutrition five days a week.”
That afternoon, Kayongo takes me on a tour. He starts in the kitchen, the heart of every home. Here, Williams’s wife Carla cooks the evening meal. Late in the afternoons, Kayongo tells me, the smells of lasagna or tacos waft through the ring, tempting the kids to cut short their workouts. He makes them finish their drills but also makes sure they get fed.
“Nobody goes home with an empty stomach,” he says. “Some kids come just to get a meal.”
Upstairs, there’s a computer lab with four monitors, a large whiteboard, and a row of windows letting in ample natural light where the kids can study during the school year and get help with their homework. There’s an office with a couch and desk, more windows, and natural light. Next door is a supply room with six shelving units amply stocked with red, white, green, blue, and black T-shirts, polos, sweatpants, and hoodies—all printed with “Northside Boxing Club.” The kids receive inventory, organize it, and fulfill online orders. Revenues go back into the club.
“We’re teaching them to run a business,” Kayongo says. “Some of these kids have parents who can’t help a lot. That’s where we step in.”
Kayongo teaches a money management class. The kids can earn money doing odd jobs around the club, such as cutting the grass. They are paid $10 for every Black history program they complete. A large workout room with slogans painted on the walls—Train with Purpose, Keep Moving Forward, Focus on Your Way, Be That Person—has several cardboard boxes containing black backpacks stacked against one wall. The NBC provides kids with backpacks, shoes, books, and whatever other school supplies they need. There’s a room with a dryer and washer where they can do their laundry—some don’t have these amenities at home. There’s a Ping-Pong table in a wide hallway. And there’s a quiet room with walls painted in soothing gray tones, a window, and two upholstered chairs, one of them cradling a pillow saying: “You matter.”
“If a kid is going through a tough time, they can come in here and chill,” he says.
They can also connect the kids with a therapist if they want someone to talk to.
Burnet envisioned “a community of hopeful and empowered youth who achieve self-discipline, confidence, compassion, and respect.” He met Kayongo in 2012, when the two were training at Uppercut Boxing Gym in Northeast Minneapolis. When Burnet had secured funding to open Northside Boxing Club in 2016, he called Kayongo, whose professional boxing career was in its twilight and who’d been working security jobs since. Kayongo knew boxing, had a highly evolved work ethic, and radiated kindness. But it was Kayongo’s personal story that convinced Burnet that he was the man to run his gym.
“We knew kids coming in would be going through a lot of things,” Burnet says. “He’d been through everything.”
Kayongo sits in the main room opposite the boxing ring and tells his story in a voice so soft that you have to lean in to catch everything he’s saying. He was born in the slums of Kampala, Uganda’s capital. His parents were Muslim, a minority. His father was a medic in the army, his mother a traditional healer.
“Every day, you’d find dead bodies on the streets,” Kayongo says. “But you have to keep going to fetch food. As a kid, I didn’t have hope. I didn’t have a dream. We just worried about what we were going to eat.”
At 11, Kayongo was kidnapped and forced to become a child soldier for the Lord’s Resistance Army, a religious rebel group fighting a guerrilla war against the government. He lived in constant terror. The LRA was notorious for torturing and mutilating perceived foes, raping civilians, and massacring villagers. They made Kayongo and the other child soldiers burn homes and slaughter innocent people. Kayongo watched other children forced to kill their parents. His own parents had no idea where he was and feared he was dead.
“If you get sick, they don’t take care of you,” he says. “They leave you behind or they kill you.”
Finally, he was rescued and brought to live in an army barracks. There, he discovered boxing, a prominent sport in Uganda. After he was reunited with his family, he and some friends cleared a crude boxing ring in the forest. They sparred without gloves, punched a heavy bag filled with sand that was suspended from a tree, and ran miles barefoot. He eventually had the chance to receive coaching and use proper equipment when a family friend secured a spot for him at Kololo High, a private school known for its boxing program.
Kayongo found purpose and salvation in boxing. It’s a message he’s keen on passing on.
“Most kids who were abducted never overcame their [emotional] wounds,” he says. “I tell the kids [at NBC] where I came from, about my struggles. How boxing got me out of the trenches. It made me feel good physically and mentally. I tell them if boxing did that for me, it can do that for them.”
As an amateur, Kayongo racked up 200 wins and five national titles. He was captain of the national team for four years. At the 2002 Commonwealth Games in Manchester, England, his discipline and work ethic earned him the honor of being Uganda’s national team flag bearer. He won a silver medal and had the chance to meet Queen Elizabeth II and David Beckham.
His success caught the eye of Tommy Brunette, who trained, managed, and promoted fighters on St. Paul’s East Side. He convinced Kayongo to come to Minnesota in 2003, when he was 22, and tagged him “The African Assassin.” With Brunette’s fatherly support, Kayongo won his first 10 fights, seven by knockout. But when Brunette died suddenly at age 50 in 2005, Kayongo’s career sputtered. He managed to win a welterweight title in 2009, but the next few years were marred by hand injuries and management disputes. He finally retired in early 2016 with an overall record of 18–5–1.
He had planned to serve the community as a police officer, like his father, who had been a cop before becoming a medic. He even earned an associate of arts degree at North Hennepin Community College and was enrolled in Brooklyn Park’s police academy when Ryan Burnet called.
“I thought I could affect the community in a positive way in law enforcement, but when Ryan brought this idea to me, it was a better idea of what I wanted to do,” says Kayongo. “I found my true serving to the world, for the community, and for me.”
He sees the work he does with Williams as not simply shepherding kids through a difficult youth but cultivating leaders to show others the way. “We’re helping kids with life skills so they can become better people in the community and in the world,” he says. “We’re trying to create good leaders. If you want to transform something, you have to take it to the young generation. I might not be around in 30 years, but they will be.”
And he’s trying to do the same in Uganda. Kayongo hadn’t been home in 15 years when he returned in 2018 to bury his mother. He tells the story of driving down the street one day in Kampala when he saw a man beating a child. Bystanders were taking videos of the incident, but no one was intervening. Kayongo stopped and jumped out of the car to help. The man complained the boy stole from his store. Kayongo paid him some money to cover his losses, and talked to the boy, who was about 10 years old. He told Kayongo he had no home. Through him, Kayongo met more children in similar situations, many of whom had left their villages for the city because their parents couldn’t feed them.
That inspired Kayongo to set up Missing Home, a program to provide food and shelter for homeless children and return them to their homes when possible. The program feeds 30–40 children daily. Since its inception several years ago, it has reunited more than 20 of them with their families.
He also established the Godfather Boxing Academy in Kampala. Though cruder in form—a small ring in the dirt with some punching bags set off by corrugated metal walls—it operates under the same principle as the Northside Boxing Club: to empower youth so that they might “gain the confidence to fulfill their potential.” His friend and fellow Ugandan boxer Abdullah Matovu oversees the program, which has enrolled about 60 kids between the ages of 8 and 16, including some found on the streets. In addition to the physical training, the academy provides kids with food and shelter and pays their school fees. Kayongo and his Ugandan partners are building a more permanent five-story structure with a boxing gym, hostel, computer library, and offices.
When Burnet speaks about Kayongo—his work ethic, his compassion, his infectious spirit—his admiration is palpable. He has no doubt he made the right choice in making that first call to Kayongo and entrusting this work to him. He’s grateful that some of Kayongo’s qualities are rubbing off on those he mentors.
“The world needs more people like Moe right now.”