Gilbert ‘Tonka’ Kabamba. Photos courtesy USA Boxing
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In boxing circles, Gilbert ‘Tonka’ Kabamba is still considered a novice with only a few years of experience. But the super heavyweight, who lives in Dorchester, has delivered results in the ring, most recently last month, when he brought home a gold medal for USA Boxing at the Pan American Championships in Mexico.
The 25-year-old Kabamba had never heard of boxing until a chance encounter with a stranger on Carson Beach in 2021 pushed him into the sport. Now, five years later, he’s pursuing a dream: a spot on the US Olympic squad in 2028, something that no Massachusetts man has accomplished since 1932.
That’s “the goal now for me for sure,” he said in an interview last week while training at Dorchester’s Waymaker Boxing (formerly Grealish Boxing) on Freeport Street.
“When I started out a few years ago my goal was always to make the Olympics, but I didn’t know how. All I knew was to get in great shape and fight my ass off…I kept fighting and I’m here now and I have it in the palm of my hand. I just have to secure it.
“In 2027 are the qualifiers, so I need to stay locked in and if I do, I feel like I should be able to qualify,” he said with conviction.
It would be quite the accomplishment for a young boxer who hadn’t fought without headgear until last month in Mexico, where he had an opening round bye but won three matches against opponents from Cuba, Brazil, and Columbia.
That was his first journey with USA Boxing’s Super Elite team but it won’t be his last. In the middle of his interview with The Reporter, a coach from USA Boxing called him with news that he’d been selected to travel to Hungary for two bouts on Nov. 14.
Kabamba accepted, which meant a quick flight to Colorado Springs this week to prepare at Team USA’s gym.
“Gilbert had raw talent when he first came into our gym,” said his head coach, Dorchester’s Mark DeLuca. “He is very athletic and is an exceptional worker. His ceiling is very high; Gilbert’s only at 50 percent of what he can become. He’s only 25, a baby, especially considering that [pro] heavyweights don’t peak until their early 30s.”
DeLuca says there’s a good chance that Kabamba will compete for Team USA at the 2028 games in Los Angeles.
“I compare him to Evander Holyfield,” the coach said. “Gilbert’s not tall at 6-2, and he is a pocket fighter like Holyfield. He has fast hands and is bigger at a solid 250 pounds.”
Dorchester’s Gilbert ‘Tonka’ Kabamba destroyed the competition during the Pan American Championships in Mexico last month, bringing home a gold medal while taking a few steps closer to his 2028 Olympic dream.
Kabamba arrived in the United States in November 2013 when he was 12. Before that, he had left the war-torn Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and had spent seven years in a Ugandan refugee camp. His brother and mentor, Patrick Mayombo, introduced him to basketball to steer him away from bad influences.
But when he was attending Everett High School, the school’s storied football coach, John DiBiaso (now head coach of Catholic Memorial High School), took one look at him and saw a linebacker, not a power forward.
Kabamba loved the contact and aggression of football, and his bone-crushing hits helped lead Everett to two Division 1 State Championships alongside current NFL players Mike Sainristil and Isaiah Likely. He earned a football scholarship to Merrimack College, where after a good freshman year, things unraveled for him during Covid-19’s protocols.
“I was getting bad grades and getting in trouble and had a meeting with the president, who pulled my scholarship,” he said. “I was depressed and didn’t know what to do. I was so big, up to 330 pounds, and couldn’t even tie my shoe without breathing hard. I had to change that.”
With an eye to playing junior college football in Kansas, Kabamba left his Dorchester home early one morning in 2021 to run on Carson Beach. Around 6 a.m., he met a stranger who stopped him mid-job and wanted to know why he was training. After a short conversation, the mysterious man urged him to go to Coach Martin Grealish’s boxing gym that day.
Reluctantly, and planning to lift weights for free, Kabamba met the man at noon and was introduced to the legendary Dorchester coach. Then the mystery man left.
“I have no idea to this day who he was,” said Kabamba. “He introduced me to Martin and asked if I was okay, and then left. I’ve never seen him again and no one knew who he was. You might say he was an angel.”
He didn’t initially take to boxing. He stayed in the corner of the gym working out, but carefully watched the boxers and the action. One day, Grealish persuaded him to give boxing a try for a year. His brother was all for it, but his mother, Maria Jane Ntamulanga, initially said ‘no,’ but eventually she relented.
“At that point every time I came in I did a little boxing and gravitated more to the boxing and eventually I fell in love with the sport,” he said.
Football has been in the rearview mirror ever since, as Kabamba has catapulted to winning the New England Golden Gloves in 2022, 2023 and 2024, and the National Golden Gloves in 2024.
In 2025, he went bigger, winning the International USA Open, taking second in the National Golden Gloves and second in the USA Boxing National Championships. And earlier this year, he won gold at the Copa America tournament in Colombia.
Bobby Russo, national Golden Gloves president and New England Golden Gloves executive director, calls Kabamba “a very good prospect.”
“To win a national title – Gilbert has already won three – puts him at the top of the peak,” he said. “The time is right; Gilbert needs to get experience, like everybody, to go in the deep end of the pool, and he will.”
Says Kabamba: “I’m a student of the sport and that’s what helped me in football too. I’m a good listener with my coaches and study everything that’s happening and putting that together with my work ethic has gotten me to where I am today. I’m an eager student. If you tell me to run through a wall, I’m going to run through the wall.”
He trains twice daily at Waymaker when in Dorchester and focuses only on winning the next fight.
“Sometimes you have to appreciate what you’ve done because they tell me no one does what I’ve done because it’s difficult to get where I am,” he said. “That’s great and all, but I’ll sit back and appreciate it when I retire.”
Copyright © 2026 Boston Neighborhood News, Inc. This content may not be re-published or re-used without written permission.
