Tijjani Zakari wrapped thick, threaded string over his right hand and forearm as he entered a dusty boxing ring in northern Nigeria. The wrap was less of a protective glove and more of a battering rod for this boxer.

With his bound arm cocked to his side, Zakari squatted low and faced his opponent. He downed his opponent with a resounding hit less than a minute after the opening whistle. A thousand onlookers let up a yell. He was victorious.

The dambe boxer Tijjani Zakari wrapped his arm in cord before a fight during the Nigeria Traditional Boxing League season finals. Traditional dambe fighting is making a comeback, but concerns have been raised about safety.

This is dambe, a generations-old West African style of boxing originally practiced by the Hausa people. It is making a comeback in Nigeria.

Two groups are cultivating this fighting style, with the hope of taking it abroad. One is a grass-roots league of dambe clubs, called the Nigeria Traditional Boxing League Association. The other, Dambe Warriors, promotes the sport online and in live events.

The referee, left, awarded a point to the dambe boxer in blue. Scoring has been standardized and other steps have been taken to modernize dambe’s appeal.

The groups are taking different approaches, but both face the difficulty of preserving dambe’s traditions while appealing to a wide audience and reckoning with the sport’s brutality.

“This is a long journey,” Faruk Bello, the league’s president and one of its founders, said, “but we are so determined.”

In dambe, a boxer wraps his stronger arm in cord for striking, the “spear.” He uses the other arm for defense, the “shield.” The goal is to knock over an opponent within three rounds.

With roots in military practices, dambe grew into an event to celebrate harvests, naming ceremonies and funerals, said Aliyu Muhammad Bunza, a professor in the department of languages and culture at Federal University Gusau in Nigeria. Boxers fought for fame, representing their towns and fighting clans.

Today, a patchwork of dambe associations hosts weekly fights for entertainment across the country, but the sport is most popular in the north.

Dambe’s surge in popularity is giving promoters hope that it can find an international audience.

With its popularity have come questions about its safety.

Some believe dambe is too dangerous in any form. Split brows, broken noses, smashed teeth and knockouts are common. The destruction is written in scars on the faces of fighters who have spent years in the ring.

“It’s too brutal,” Femi Babafemi, an amateur boxing coach, said. “Those that are doing it are really endangering their lives.”

Still, dambe has become a full-time job for many fighters. Fans, ring owners and wealthy patrons support their favorite fighters. One established boxer, Auta Nafiu Abdullah, who has fought for seven years, said he earned, on average, about 100,000 Nigerian naira, or about $275, a month.

The fights are frenetic and perilous.

Boxers gather in fighting clans around a sand pit, taunting rivals and breaking suddenly into combat. Today, they head-butt and kick as well as punch. All the while, singers and drummers play mesmeric songs to embolden fighters.

Bello, who started watching dambe 40 years ago, said he started the league in 2017 with fellow enthusiasts because he had grown fed up with what he saw as the declining quality of the sport.

An herbal mixture was rubbed into rows of half-inch incisions cut up and down a fighter’s arm.

The league founded six clubs and designed a season of weekend tournaments in which teams pit their best boxers against one an other.

Playing for a club appealed to Garkuwa Maichaga, who followed his brother into dambe at age 10. He joined the league after more than 20 years of navigating the dambe circuit alone, which he described as tiring and expensive.

Along with a regular season, the league drafted a complete set of rules. It consulted with historians, fighters and fans to codify generations of tradition while introducing new regulations to rein in the sport’s wilder tendencies.

The league standardized uniforms, limited rounds to three minutes, created a system for scoring fights and even included a code of conduct for spectators that threatens rowdy fans with a red card and expulsion.

“We want one day to have a conventional dambe whereby all countries of the world will be participating,” Bello said.

Sometimes the fighting is carried over outside the ring.

Four new clubs joined the original six in the second season. And the league reached out to groups in Niger to establish ties across the region.

“From Africa and on to the West,” Bello said. He believes that with the right support, dambe will make the leap from regional martial art to Olympic sport. And he dreams of one day taking an exhibition fight to Las Vegas.

But to create broad appeal, the league is gradually banning some customs that may prove difficult to export.

For example, fighters wear amulets for protection and intimidation. They also rub a herbal mixture into rows of half-inch incisions cut up and down their arms, believing it to strengthen punches.

For added safety, the league hired a doctor to monitor fights. It is reaching out to sportswear manufactures to create a glove that mimics the traditional hand wraps, only without the flesh-tearing cords. Weight categories will be added next season. So will health insurance and ambulance support, if the league can bring in more money.

Promotional posters for dambe are popping up all over Nigeria in an effort to spread the sport.