In the small town of Batié in western Cameroon, a young Francis Ngannou is in his living room watching his mother cook dinner for the evening. What she doesn’t know is that this could be the last time they ever see each other.
In a nearby bedroom, the remnants of a life in Africa are tightly packed in what can only be described as expendable luggage—things that wouldn’t be missed should they be lost along the way. It’s a life that has consisted of gruelling conditions working in a sand mine in order to help provide for his family. In the early hours of night, the young man—along with several other strangers who all harbour the same aspirations for a brighter tomorrow—will board an inflatable dingy to make the dangerous, not-guaranteed journey to Europe. His mother knows nothing, nor do his friends, or his siblings. He knows they would only be confused, worried and try to talk him out of it. But his hunger for a different life is something they could never understand. A fire burns within him, one that is channelled through his blessed physicality, and it all begins with that initial journey into the unknown—the first stepping stone on his path to greatness.
Undetected like a shadow in the dark, he locks the door as he leaves his family home, he gets on the raft, and he’s gone. He will travel across land and sea, crossing several continents, only to get detained and eventually sent back to Africa. But again, he takes the plunge. And after 14 months of punishing conditions, setbacks, and run-ins with the police, at 26 years old, he finally arrives. If nature’s elements couldn’t kill him, then nothing else can either.
Boasting the hardest punch ever recorded by a human being—like being hit by a Ford Escort car going top speed—and with a frame so muscular that he looks as if he were created for one sole purpose, to defeat The Avengers, Francis Ngannou’s journey to Europe was, as Joe Rogan said it, ‘something out of a comic book’. After winning the most decorated title in combat sports, the UFC Heavyweight Championship (one he achieved by KO-ing Stipe Miocic, a man commonly referred to as the greatest heavyweight of all time), Ngannou abandoned the MMA cage for the boxing ring, fighting two of the best to ever do it, Tyson Fury and Anthony Joshua in Riyadh.
The former saw him come up short in a highly contested decision loss, only to get stopped by Joshua in his second bout—his first ever knock out defeat. But now leaving boxing and the UFC behind, he finally returns to the MMA cage next month, making his Professional Fighters League (PFL) debut, again in Riyadh. But if you think that two losses and some time away from the cage would sow a seed of doubt in the man they call ‘The Predator’, then you would be sadly mistaken.
He Facetimes me from Paris, France, where he’s in training camp for his highly anticipated MMA return against the towering 6’8 Renan Ferreira for the PFL Heavyweight Championship. But our first encounter came earlier this summer at a press conference in Washington DC.
Hosted by recent PFL signee (YouTuber-turned-Boxer) Jake Paul, I shook Ngannou’s hand, which felt like being hugged by a torso with six individual biceps attached—his presence is overwhelming, if not terrifying, if it wasn’t for the fact that his defusing smile and childish laugh are both highly contagious. Even Jake Paul, a man notorious for trash-talking every combat athlete under the sun, admitted to me that standing beside Ngannou was a humbling reality check. “If he so much as turned an inch toward me, I would’ve run,” Paul admitted. You’re not alone on that one, Jake.
A native French speaker, Paris has become an adopted hometown for Ngannou, the city of lights where he can bask in the fruits of his hard-earned labour. But it wasn’t long ago where, literally fresh off the boat, a homeless Ngannou stepped foot inside his first Parisian MMA gym and brashly proclaimed to the owner: “I’m going to be world champion one day. Can you train me?” Despite his size, understandably, skeptical eyebrows were raised throughout the adrenalised fight lair. But after he put the gloves on, all doubts evaporated, and it was no longer a question of if he had the talent, but rather how long until he became a world champion.
“I was homeless for my first few months in Paris. In the gym parking lot, I found some cardboard boxes that I used to sleep on. I had no money. No clothes. And I knew nobody either. All I had was a hunger to fight.”
But this self-induced solitude was far from foreign territory, as ever since childhood, he preferred being alone.
“Many people don’t know this about me, but I prefer to be with myself. Sometimes when I’m out with people, even if I’m having a good time, in some ways, I’m always looking for an escape,” he laughs. “Being around people for too long takes my energy away. And I need to recruit this energy for my fights, so I can’t let other people drag it out of me.” This internal energy—his ‘chi’, if you will—has been with him for as long as he can remember. He may not have found any solace in the company of other people, yet he found it in action movies or, more specifically, the posters of action movies, because he didn’t even access to a TV. Still, the poster for Rambo II, which hung in his late father’s bedroom, provided enough testosterone-fuelled validation to ignite the spark for what would become his lifelong vocation—prize fighting. He would hang around businesses that had a TV in their window, just hoping to catch a glimpse of a movie trailer, anything that would provide that quick fix of action for which he so desperately yearned.
“But finally, I got to see a full episode of K2000,” he smiles fondly, as he begins singing the theme song over the phone. Not until I later googled ‘K2000’ did I realise that it was the French translation of David Hasselhoff’s ’80s TV show Knight Rider. “That, and WWE wrestling, were the only two things I ever watched. The action. The fighting. The music. It was the most important thing ever to me.”
Getting a small taste of what awaited beyond the shackles of his geographical misplacement, Ngannou’s escape plan took years to formulate. And when he finally left, that was it. No note. No phone number. Just gone. He took an inflatable raft fit for a child across the ocean. He walked. He ran. He climbed. He rode with smugglers through the most hostile terrains on the planet. And many of the people he met along the way, those in search of the same goal as he, died. For the first time, Ngannou admits, he was actually scared.
“People get lost. People die. It scares the hell out of you. But there is no way back, and since you made it this far, you have no choice but to keep going. But…” he pauses reflectively, “it was horrible.”
Floating on his inflatable raft that was leaking air in the middle of the ocean off the coast of Spain, he was rescued by the Red Cross. A sudden glimmer of hope that would only lead to yet another setback. When they found that he had no legal documentation, he was imprisoned in Morocco for two months. Finally, he was dropped in Paris. Sure, he was starved and homeless, but he was rich in excitement, leading to him walking across the city, peeking into every shop window until he finally stumbled upon a boxing gym.
“They probably thought I was a bit delirious, and maybe I was. I had no money. I was homeless. I had just arrived in Paris from a boat. And here I am telling a room full of men who have been training their entire lives that I’m going to become world champion. But the difference between me and every other man in that gym, is that they weren’t there to become a champion. I was.”
Admittedly, he had never heard of MMA, but when his new coaches suggested the quickest way to get out of poverty and earn a paycheck was to compete in MMA, he agreed.
He slept in the gym parking lot for several months, until the owner lent him his apartment, where Ngannou thereby had time to find a part time job as a night club bouncer (I pity the inebriated Frenchmen who, if any, had the marbles to yap up to him in those days).
He began competing, he began winning, and it didn’t take long until he began making a name for himself on the regional MMA scene. So when that inevitable UFC call finally came, he was ready. And his ascent was as immediate as his hands were dangerous. Unlike most in his weight class, whose body types were more akin to a Tyson Fury, Ngannou looked like a photo-shopped action figure. And for anyone lucky enough to have witnessed his first few fights in the octagon, you could hear Joe Rogan and the other commentators incredulously commenting on the Herculean, mythical like presence that was before them. He made quick and easy work of his first seven UFC opponents, four of those not even making it past the first round. In his title elimination bout against UFC legend Alistair Overeem—a man who also looks as if he were created in a laboratory—Ngannou delivered such a punishing knockout that many wondered if Overeem would ever walk again, let alone fight.
He came up short in his first title shot against Stipe Miocic, but all it did was highlight what changes needed to be made next time. His next two fights lasted less than thirty seconds, his next three less than ninety. An undeniable Ngannou got his rematch against Stipe for the title, and finally did what he said he was going to all along, becoming World Champion by obliterating a man UFC head honcho Dana White had once called “the greatest heavyweight in history.”
Now crowned the ‘baddest man on the planet’, a dispute with the UFC lead to Ngannou abandoning the throne—the first champion to willingly vacate a title since lightweight champion BJ Penn in 2004. The most dangerous combat athlete on the planet was now a free agent, and in a surprising turn of events, Ngannou signed with rival organisation, PFL. Switching over to his first love, boxing, Ngannou slotted straight into the top of the card facing boxing icons Tyson Fury and Anthony Joshua in consecutive ‘superfight’ bouts in Riyadh, and despite coming up short in both, his efforts proved that he belonged. But alas, his toughest fight was yet to come.
Weeks after his Riyadh-based bout against Anthony Joshua, Ngannou’s son, Kobe (named after NBA legend, Kobe Bryant), passed away. He was only 15 months old.
“That took me back to level zero,” Ngannou says solemnly. “I was ready for everything that life had thrown at me. I was prepared for every fight in the world, and whatever life tried to take from me, I was ready…except for that. That has been my biggest fight, my biggest challenge, the biggest pain of my life. Nothing else is comparable.”
Perhaps the only way to get over such an indescribable tragedy, one that renders even the most dangerous man on the planet completely helpless, is to find a reason worth fighting again. And despite struggling to get through the toughest year of his life, Ngannou is excited, if not giddy, to return to the MMA cage this month.
“I’ve been doing this a long time, I have the muscle memory. When I stepped back into the gym, it felt like I had never left. And although I love boxing, I still have a lot of challenges, and a lot of doubt. But with MMA, I feel at home.” And for all the fans out there aching to know whether we’ll ever get the dream fight of Jon Jones versus Francis Ngannou, he says, “Of course, I want this fight. But it’s not up to me. It’s up to the UFC. So ask them.”
But even with that superfight lingering on the horizon—its hype constantly amplified by eager Instagram comments begging for it to happen— Ngannou admits that he’s not even certain he will continue to fight on after his title bout this month. “We will see,” he says. “Part of me thinks maybe I should retire, but another part of me thinks that my son would have wanted me to keep fighting. So I don’t know. But, if I continue, I will do it for him.”
