‘Most Difficult Thing That I’ve Ever Done’ – Kamaru Usman Talks About Switching From American Football to Wrestling

Published 06/21/2021, 12:03 PM EDT

Kamaru Usman is the UFC welterweight champion and is often considered one of the greatest UFC fighters of the era. The fighter has defended his welterweight belt 4 times and is No.2 in the UFC pound for pound rankings. While Usman has achieved almost everything in MMA, his journey to UFC greatness was full of difficulties.

Recently, ‘The Nigerian Nightmare’ talked about the first real difficulty he faced in his wrestling journey. Usman talked about how when he was a young child the decision to switch from American football to wrestling was really difficult for him.

Usman said, “We’ve never heard of the wrestling. The wrestling we heard of was the entertainment of the WWE. And of course, we watched it on television. And I remember I had mentioned something one time to my father about wrestling.”

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“He’s like no, we don’t want you to get hit by a chair, don’t want you to get hurt. So I was like, okay they are not gonna understand that there’s no way there are gonna let me do it. So if told my very African military dad that I wanted to do wrestling and he said no. Guess what, it’s all gone, it’s done, I can’t do it.”

“In my 9th grade, the first year in high school, I told him that. I played football and halfway through I stopped playing football and switched over to wrestling, just trying it out. It was the most difficult thing that I’ve ever done in my life.”

How it all began for Kamaru Usman?

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Kamaru Usman talked about how joining wrestling and informing his parents about the same was very difficult. However, the fighter has come a long way from there and has cemented his place amongst the UFC greats.

Kamaru Usman Opens Up on the Time He Accidentally Called the Cops on His Father

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While Usman concentrated on wrestling early in his life, he eventually turned to MMA. The fighter made his professional MMA debut against David Glover at RFA 5. Since then; the fighter has improved and moved up in the MMA world. Eventually, the fighter ended up becoming the UFC welterweight champion at the UFC 235 event against Tyron Woodley.

Now the fighter will most probably face Colby Covington in their much-anticipated rematch. And we as fans can’t wait to see ‘The Nigerian Nightmare’ in action.

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Written by:

Paras Pande is a UFC author at EssentiallySports who is pursuing his graduation in Journalism and Mass Communication. An ardent follower of the UFC, he has been covering the sport for 2 years now. Before joining the team at EssentiallySports, Paras gained expertise as an MMA writer whilst working with Sportskeeda.

‘Most Difficult Thing That I’ve Ever Done’ – Kamaru Usman Talks About Switching From American Football to Wrestling

How it all began for Kamaru Usman?

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