By Earl Nurse and Aanu Adeoye, CNN
UFC fighter takes a sweaty path to the title 01:39 (CNN)Kamaru Usman believes he was born to fight and on Saturday, the 31-year-old proved it by becoming the first African Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) champion after defeating title holder Tyron Woodley, at a flagship event in Las Vegas.
“If Tyron Woodley doesn’t bring his A-game, it’s going to be a short night,” Usman had said about the man who had been welterweight champion since 2016.
For Usman, the UFC presents the perfect arena to showcase his talent for a sport he joined at elite level in 2015. Since joining the UFC, Usman has slowly worked his way up the ranks from rookie to title challenger in the space of just a few years. Born in Auchi, in the midwestern Edo state of Nigeria, Usman moved to the United States when he was seven, finding a passion for wrestling in high school.
In 2010, he won a national title while in college at the University of Nebraska at Kearney. He hasn’t looked back since and now has a record 14 wins and just one loss in his mixed martial arts career, also known as MMA.
A fighting chance
Like many Nigerian fighters before him, Usman is nicknamed the ‘Nigerian Nightmare,’ and is one of around five Africans in the UFC. Usman’s rise has also brought attention from some friends in high places, notably, Dana White, president of the UFC, who said in a recent interview: “I was impressed. I’m telling you, I want to see him fight Woodley now. I want to see the Woodley fight. That’s what I want,” he said in a post-fight interview with Fox Sports. On Saturday, he got his wish in the eagerly-awaited showdown with the American fighter Woodley.
In a CNN interview, Usman says he believes he could be welterweight champion by now if he had gotten the chance to fight Woodley as planned in September last year. Usman was penciled in as the backup for a fight between Woodley and English challenger Darren Till in America last year, amid fears that Till would not make the weight required to fight in the division.
