UFC champion, Kamaru Usman, has relived his tough beginnings when he was in Nigeria.
He was born in Edo State where he lived until he was eight years old, when what many will regard as destiny took him to the United States.
Like Odion Ighalo and Victor Oshimen, who also used to struggle with life in the Nigerian street, Usman said he used to hawk akpu (fufu0 for his mother.
In an interview with ‘Channels Television’, he recalled:
“We grew up in the village. We farmed. As a small boy, farm boy, I used to hawk Akpu, put hot Akpu on my head. I came from nothing.
“There is just struggle every day, the struggle to, how are we gonna eat next week, next month. What are we gonna do?
“We owned a small store where we sold clothes, we sold shoes, my mum sold bags, anything that we could sell, my mum was able to get and try to sell. My mum was a hustler and that is one of the things I respect so much about her as a woman with three rowdy Naija boys.”
He is happy his daughter, Samirah, is getting into sports:
“My daughter, Samirah, I love her to death. She’s very intriguing to me because from about 6 months to about three and half years of her life, she went to the gym with me every day. Then she hit about five years and then she started saying, ‘you know I’m not going to do this daddy, right. You know I’m not going do this sport.’
“I think I have to just accept that and honestly I don’t think I want her to this sport anyway. She’s got her thing, she’s doing gymnastics and for self defence. She does Ju-Jitsu because she has to learn how to control the situation if anything happens. I’m okay with those right now.
“Talking about the Sport that I’ve spent so much time in, that’s a dream. So now instead of getting punched in the face you are talking about people who are getting punched in the face. And so, it’s a dream for me but I’m slowly getting my feet wet in it and finding my ground because it is something I definitely want to do when I walk away from this sport.”
