Tee Jay

Taju Akay, better known in the ring as Tee Jay, was a Ghanaian-born London cruiserweight who briefly held the British title and spent the rest of his career matched against opponents where the division was at its most unforgiving, in the space between strong domestic contenders and established championship operators. Born in Accra on 21 January 1962, and later based in South London, he settled with his family in Paddington in the 1970s and boxed at the All Stars Boxing and Youth Club, a gym founded by his father, the former professional Ishola Akay. In the pro rings, he was listed around 6ft 1in, an orthodox fighter with enough reach and timing to make a round feel longer than it was meant to, and he carried himself like a man who had learned his craft properly before he ever earned a purse. That grounding showed up most clearly in the amateur climax of his youth, representing Ghana at the 1984 Olympic Games at light heavyweight and drawing Evander Holyfield in his opening bout, a cruel assignment for any boxer, let alone one at the start of the tournament. Holyfield won, and Tee Jay came home with the kind of experience that does not make a scrapbook glitter but does tell you exactly where you stand. It also helps explain the professional fighter who followed: not a reckless puncher hunting a single moment, but a disciplined cruiserweight who could box at a measured pace, change rhythm without fuss, and stay composed in the sort of tense domestic title fights where the other corner is trying to drag you into mistakes.

He turned professional in 1985 and, as so often with London-based talent, his early career was built around availability and rounds rather than fanfare. His debut is logged as 28 March 1985 at the Festival Hall in Basildon, where he stopped Tony Bowers in the first round, a brisk beginning that suggested he could punch when the opening arrived cleanly. A month later, he drew with Lou Gent over six in Croydon, and that result, more than a quick stoppage, was a better early clue to the kind of pro he would be, a boxer who could win clearly on his night but could also be held in a tight little fight when the other man refused to be impressed. From there, the pattern of his matchmaking was very British and very practical. He was moved through six rounders in different parts of the country, asked to travel, asked to win without drama, and asked to learn how to cope with awkwardness. He boxed George Carmen twice, first in Wandsworth and later in Norwich, and won both times, one on points and one by stoppage, the sort of repeat pairing that tells you a manager is using the same opponent to measure whether the fighter is improving rather than simply collecting results. By early 1986, he was still being kept busy, and by the autumn, he had built enough momentum to be put straight into the most serious domestic business, the British cruiserweight title, which had only recently established itself as a meaningful national prize. The timing mattered. Cruiserweight in Britain in the mid-1980s was no longer a curiosity, but it still lacked the depth and the settled hierarchy of the old weights, so the men who climbed quickest tended to be the ones prepared to take hard fights early. Tee Jay was one of those men.

The first title shot came in October 1986, when the belt vacated by Sammy Reeson was up for grabs. Tee Jay met Andy Straughn and lost on points over twelve, a defeat that did not embarrass him but did highlight the thin margins at domestic championship level, where a single slow patch can cost three rounds and the argument with it. What followed was the measure of him. Rather than step back into safe work and wait for another opportunity, he stayed active, kept winning, and put himself back into position quickly. In May 1987, he got the second chance, this time against the defending champion Roy Smith, and he took it in the most decisive way possible, stopping Smith in the first round to win the British cruiserweight title. If you want to understand how a fighter is regarded, watch what happens after he wins a belt. Some champions are protected, defended softly, and kept busy in controlled settings. Tee Jay’s title reign was treated differently. He was matched straight into meaningful fights, and the sense was that his handlers believed he belonged on nights where the belt was not the only thing at stake. The British title brought him status, but it also brought him into line with the other recognised cruiserweight prize in Britain, the Commonwealth title, and with it the inevitable collision with Glenn McCrory.

McCrory was an established champion type, disciplined, experienced, and comfortable in twelve-round title fights, where the main work is done in the quiet minutes when the crowd is unsure anything is happening. Their meeting took place on 21 January 1988 at the Latchmere Leisure Centre in Wandsworth, with both the British and Commonwealth titles on the line, and McCrory won a points decision over twelve. The official scoring reflected a close contest rather than a stroll, and that fits the way Tee Jay fought. He was not a reckless challenger who emptied himself in the first three rounds and then waited to be rescued. He boxed, tried to solve the range, and kept the fight honest enough that McCrory had to do proper title fight work. It is worth noting, too, what that bout says about Tee Jay’s strengths and limitations. His height and reach gave him a natural platform for a jab, and he could use that lead hand to break rhythm, to stop a forward surge, and to keep the other man resetting. But at the best domestic and Commonwealth level, opponents do not merely walk forward. They time the jab, they take your lead away, and they make you fight in the half range where the taller man can be made to feel cramped. That is where Tee Jay could be forced into harder, less natural exchanges. McCrory’s win did not reduce Tee Jay to an also-ran, but it did place him in a familiar British category, the champion who can win the belt, but who must find something extra to keep it when another champion arrives with equal fitness and more settled twelve-round habits.

When McCrory vacated the British title later that year, Tee Jay’s route back to the belt ran, again, through Straughn. In November 1988, they met for the vacant British title, and Straughn again took the decision, leaving Tee Jay with the uncomfortable truth that his domestic career had been defined by two men: McCrory at the Commonwealth level and Straughn at the British level, each capable of beating him by different means. Yet Tee Jay did not drift away. He rebuilt with a run of wins that carried him into one more major night, and in May 1991, he earned another chance at both the British and Commonwealth titles, this time against Derek Angol at the Royal Albert Hall. Angol was defending the Commonwealth title for the third time and making the first defence of the British title, and he stopped Tee Jay in the third round of twelve. It was a hard ending, and it proved to be Tee Jay’s final fight. That last chapter helps put his professional record into proper shape. His overall total is commonly listed as 19 fights, 14 wins, 4 losses and 1 draw, with 8 wins by knockout. Those numbers can be read two ways. One is to say he lacked the longevity of a long-reigning champion. The other, more honest way, is to recognise that almost all of his meaningful fights were aimed upward, at titles and contenders, and that a short career can still be historically useful if it intersects with the right names at the right moments. Tee Jay’s career did exactly that, because it captured a particular phase of British cruiserweight history, when the division was finding its first real domestic champions and measuring them against the Commonwealth standard.

In style, he belonged to the structured school rather than the smash-and-grab. His stoppage ratio, eight knockouts in fourteen wins, was respectable without being the kind that frightens promoters into paying extra insurance, and that fits the evidence of his matchmaking and outcomes. He could end a fight quickly, as he did against Roy Smith for the title, but he was also comfortable winning over the distance and working methodically, which is how fighters often survive the awkward domestic circuit. He was tall for cruiserweight and carried the kind of reach that allowed him to pick shots rather than trade them. He also came out of a gym environment where boxing was treated as a craft. All Stars was not a glossy factory; it was a community boxing club with family roots, and Tee Jay’s connection to it, through his father and his own training base, gives his story an identity beyond the usual London journeyman map of venues. The other important contextual point is that he was an immigrant athlete who chose to represent Ghana as an amateur and then built his professional career in Britain. That is not unusual now, but in the 1980s it still carried a certain distance, culturally and commercially. Tee Jay was not simply fighting opponents; he was also establishing himself in a system that could be slow to understand a boxer who did not fit the easy local categories. Winning the British title was, in that respect, a meaningful landmark.

Tee Jay died on 19 May 2006 in London after suffering a heart attack, aged 44. The bare facts are stark because 44 is no age for anybody, and especially not for a former national champion who had been part of his city’s boxing fabric. His legacy, though, sits cleanly inside the record without any need for embroidery. He was a Ghanaian Olympian who shared an Olympic ring with Holyfield. He turned professional in Britain and became British cruiserweight champion in 1987, a period when that title still carried the freshness of a division inventing itself in public. He defended once, then lost his belt in a unification with McCrory, the man who would go on to become one of the division’s recognised British standard bearers. He challenged again, twice, fell short against Straughn, then finally took one more crack at the British and Commonwealth double at the Royal Albert Hall before stepping away. In a division that often struggles to produce clean narratives, Tee Jay’s career is a proper boxing story: early promise, an earned title, a tough reign, and defeats that came in the right company, against men who were themselves part of the weight’s history in Britain.