Former Ethiopian light heavyweight boxer Seifu Mekonnen “Tibo” died on Monday at the age of 67 from complications from diabetes.
Tibo was diagnosed with diabetes more than 25 years ago and he had been on dialysis treatment since April 2009.
His funeral service was held on Saturday, June 20, 2020 at Kidist Mariam Ethiopian Orthodox Church in Los Angeles and the burial service at Hollywood Forever Cemetery.
Tibo was born on April 11, 1953, in the Aleltu, Shoa providence of Ethiopia but spent his teenage years in Addis Ababa, the nation’s capital
Tibo got into boxing in 1971 while he was a student at Menelik II High School in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia after he was spotted by Edward Simon, an American teacher at the school.
Following a few exhibition bouts, Tibo was selected to represent Ethiopia at the 1972 Munich Olympic Games where he lost to the European champion on points. A year later, he won a gold medal at the East & Central African Championship, which was held in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.
Tibo’s next target was the 1976 Montreal Olympic Games. However, there were not enough opponents in his division to train & fight with in the country not to mention the lack of desirable training facilities and well-trained coaches in Ethiopia at that time So, Tibo made a bold decision to move to neighboring Kenya in 1974 and train there for 2 years with the Kenyan Breweries Boxing team. One of the highlights of his stay there was beating highly rated S. Onyango, who at that time was a 4-time Kenyan champion. Tibo fought 16 fights for Breweries and his record was 15 wins and 1 defeat.
Tibo was well prepared for his second Olympics’ participation but unfortunately, Ethiopia together with 27 other African countries, boycotted the Montreal Games after the International Olympic Committee (IOC) refused to exclude New Zealand, whose rugby team took part in a tour of apartheid-era South Africa. This was indeed a sad moment for Tibo and several other athletes who worked so hard and were looking forward for the Games in Montreal only to see their hopes & dreams squashed by politics.
The sport of boxing gave him the opportunities to represent his country both as a boxer and a trainer; and he was able to travel to so many countries. He also had the opportunity to meet a number of African leaders including Emperor Haile Selassie of Ethiopia, Jomo Kenyatta of Kenya, Idi Amin of Uganda and Kenneth Kaunda of Zambia.
Tibo was named head coach of the Ethiopian national boxing team and served for two years before he moved to United States in 1979.

The Confederation of African Football (CAF) is set to postpone its Africa Cup of Nations from 2021 to 2022 due to the ongoing issues surrounding the COVID-19 pandemic.
According to RMC Sports, a source said it is expected to move the competition which is scheduled to take place from January 9 to February 6 2021 in Cameroon.
Despite being less than a year away, only the hosts have qualified for the competition with international matches currently put on hold due to the pandemic.
Only two of the six group matches to choose the other 23 teams have been played, with the top two teams in each of the 12 groups qualifying.
Cameroon is currently playing within the qualification, but have already counted as one of the two teams to qualify from their group.
The source said: “Today the trend is to postpone the tournament to January 2022.
“Playing the tournament in the summer of 2022 can’t be excluded too because the World Cup will take place in November 2022 but we must study the medical process so as not to destabilize African teams at the World Cup.”
The summer is still on the cards despite CAF announcing in January that the competition would be moved to the winter months due to the unfavorable climate during the African summer.
Africa has seen more than 129,000 confirmed cases of COVID-19, resulting in the deaths of more than 3,700 people.

Lawyers for former world athletics chief Lamine Diack, who is on trial for corruption, protested their client’s innocence and said the 87-year-old would die in jail if sentenced to a prison term.
French financial prosecutors sought a four-year jail sentence for Senegalese Diack, saying he and his son, Papa Massata Diack, were at the heart of a scheme that solicited bribes worth millions of euros from Russian athletes to cover up failed doping tests and allow them to continue competing.
Prosecutors had sought a five-year sentence for Papa Massata Diack.
Lamine Diack’s lawyers on Thursday said there were “no tangible elements” proving Lamine Diack’s participation in the scheme, and put the blame on his absent son.
“One has to distinguish between the son and the father,” said defense lawyer Simon Ndiaye, adding that Diack’s main fault had been to hire his son as a marketing consultant for the Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF), a position that he abused. The IAAF is now known as World Athletics.
Stressing the fragile health of Lamine Diack, his second defense lawyer William Bourdon said: “Sending him to the jails of the Republic can only be a death accelerator”.
Friday was the last day of the trial. The verdict is slated for 16 September.