Dwight Muhammad Qawi

Dwight Muhammad Qawi, born Dwight Braxton on 5 January 1953 in Baltimore, Maryland, and known as the "Camden Buzzsaw", was an American professional boxer who competed from 1978 to 1998. A world champion in two weight classes, he held the WBC and Ring magazine light heavyweight titles from 1981 to 1983 and the WBA cruiserweight title from 1985 to 1986, and was inducted into the International Boxing Hall of Fame in 2004. He died on 25 July 2025, aged 72. ^{1 2}

Qawi was born in Baltimore but grew up in Camden, New Jersey, where he became involved in crime at a young age; he was convicted of armed robbery and spent around five years in prison. At Rahway State Prison he found the prison's boxing programme, in which the light heavyweight contender James Scott was also an inmate, and when he was released in 1978 he immediately turned professional. ¹

He converted to Islam in the early 1980s and had his name changed from Dwight Braxton to Dwight Muhammad Qawi; the Associated Press obituary dates the legal name change to 1982, following his conversion. The sources attest the conversion but name no school of Islam for him, and none is recorded in his data record. ^{1 3}

Short and stocky for his divisions, Qawi fought with an infighting style of feints, head movement and relentless pressure, often likened to Joe Frazier, at whose Philadelphia gym he had trained. After going 1–1–1 in his first three fights he won fourteen in a row, including a return to Rahway to beat James Scott, which earned him a title shot. ¹

On 19 December 1981, the underdog Braxton stopped the champion Matthew Saad Muhammad in ten rounds in Atlantic City to win the WBC light heavyweight title, and he defended it three times, beating Saad Muhammad again among others. In March 1983 he lost a unification bout to the WBA champion Michael Spinks. Moving up to the new cruiserweight division, he took the WBA title from Piet Crous in South Africa in July 1985. ¹

In July 1986 he lost that title to Evander Holyfield in a fifteen-round split decision in Holyfield's hometown of Atlanta, a fight remembered among the finest of the division; Holyfield stopped him in their 1987 rematch. Qawi later campaigned at heavyweight, losing to George Foreman in 1988, and fought on until 1998, retiring at 46 with a record of 41 wins, 11 losses and one draw, 25 wins by knockout. ¹

From 1998 Qawi worked at the Lighthouse, a drug and alcohol rehabilitation centre in Mays Landing, New Jersey, working with adults and adolescents as a patient advocate, and he also worked as a boxing trainer in New Jersey. He died on 25 July 2025 at a nursing home in Baltimore, having been diagnosed with dementia five years earlier. ^{1 3}

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