Frances Ngannou has gone from being homeless to a legit UFC heavyweight championship contender. Tonight Ngannou got the biggest win of his MMA career when he knocked out former K-1 champion and #1 contender Alistair Overeem during tonight’s UFC 218
Yesterday, Bleacher Report detailed how Ngannou went from a child laborer in Cameroon, to being homeless in France and eventually finding MMA.
Via Bleacher Report
Frequently unable to afford the cost of school, Ngannou says he started working in the sand mines at age 12. It was grueling and dangerous work, spending hours shoveling sand into the backs of trucks so it could be shipped to big cities for use in construction.
After just a few years though, Ngannou knew he’d outgrown what was possible even in Douala.On his first full day living on the streets of Paris, Ngannou did three things: He learned where to go to eat, where to sleep, and then he went out to find a boxing gym.
His plan was simple. He walked through different neighborhoods asking strangers on the street if they knew of a gym in the area. When he found one that looked promising, he would go in and tell the boxing coach: “I just moved here. I’m homeless and I don’t have any money—but I’m not here to beg. I just need some place to train because I’m going to become world champion.”
Ngannou quickly located a coach who agreed to let him train at his gym. He used the $50 the coach gave him during their first meeting to buy a backpack, one workout shirt, one pair of shorts and one towel.
His new coach was impressed with his boxing skills, but people at the gym told him if he wanted to make money in combat sports, he should try MMA. Boxing was a closed world, they said, and without connections to powerful promoters or trainers, he’d be better off in the renegade mixed-rules sport.
Ngannou had one question: What in the world was MMA?
Amazing.