BOXING STAR ISAIAH IKHONI’S LAST BREAKFAST AT HOME
▪️ When death crawled like a thief in Ikhoni family’s Ongata Rongai homestead
Like a thief, death crawled quietly at the home of Isaiah Ikhoni’s family on Thursday, July 10, 2025.
It was another normal day for the family as wife Beatrice served her beloved husband Isaiah Ikhoni a sumptous breakfast. He loved eating well.
Little were they aware the cruel fist of death was lurking by, ready to pounce on a guardless and helpless Ikhoni in the house he built as his permanent base.
Two hours after taking his breakfast, Ikhoni complained of an unusual heat in his body.
“Naskia mwili ina joto sana, wacha nipate breeze hapa nje (l’m feeling extra hot let me have some fresh air outside),” Ikhoni told his wife Beatrice.
Ikhoni was heading out to get fresh air because of the restlessness he was feeling then. While going outside, he suddenly collapsed with his wife holding him by the side. He then started gasping for air.
Ikhoni’s son Brian, who was outside basking in the early sunshine, dashed to support his mum.
“I realised my dad was not okay. I had never seen him in this state before,” Brian told boxersworld.co.ke in an interview.
“We had to move fast. He was unconscious and sweating. Immediately I got hold of my motorbike rushed him to nearby Fatima Hospital.”
How did Brian carry his unconscious dad on his bike, one may ask?
The 30-year-old Brian, an air and refrigeration engineer, says his dad weighed 98kgs. That’s a super-heavyweight in the boxing weight class.
“My mum tried she couldn’t manage lifting him up on my bike. Somehow I managed, I just don’t know where that extra strength came from.”
As he was unconscious, he placed his dad infront facing him his head on Brian’s shoulder.
“On reaching Fatima Hospital, they said he had no pulse, his body was warm,” says Brian.
By then his mum and sister Emmy were already at the hospital. Luckily enough, an Uber taxi dropped a visitor at the hospital.
Anxiety and restlessness was creeping in. They had to save a life.
The Uber driver rushed them to Mbagathi Hospital. Emmy was in the front seat with mum and Brian at the back monitoring an unconscious Ikhoni seated silently between them. He was sweating profusely.
What transpired at Mbagathi was a big disappointment to the Ikhoni family.
“They didn’t even admit him. They pronounced him dead using a stethoscope to check on his pulse rate,” says a disappointed Emmy, a pharmacist who studied medicine in India.
“That was so inhuman and rude, they said they were bringing a stretcher which they didn’t, yaani they showed no urgency at all. The way they handled him was unprofessional contrary to what I saw in India. However I’m not blaming them for my father’s death.”
As a procedure, they then reported their dad’s death to the Police station and took him to Montezuma mortuary.
The death was so sudden for them to accept Ikhoni was gone. It was like a sucker punch.
“For quite sometime we were in denial dad had left us, I just felt weak with no strength to move,” explains the 33-year-old Emmy.
“We finally accepted the reality dad was dead, and there’s nothing we could do about it, so sad our great dad we all admired had just left us that way.”
The postmortem report revealed Ikhoni died of arteries failure with the right artery almost completely blocked.
Emmy further explains: “When arteries fail you feel restless, sweating occurs.
Breathing problems come after the restlessness. The cause of arteries failing is the blockage that happens which causes breathing problems in the later stage.”
Consultations are ongoing on the date and place of burial for the late Kenyan boxing icon Isaiah Ikhoni aka Danicho, formerly a Kenya Breweries Limited employee before turning pro in 1981 in Tokyo, Japan.
