LAS VEGAS AND RIYADH, SAUDI ARABIA — Cameras surround a ring at a gym Francis Ngannou has opened himself in Las Vegas. For years, Ngannou could be seen every day at the UFC Performance Institute, but his scenery changed in 2023. A full-size boxing ring takes center stage in the facility, with the word “GIMIK” printed loudly above it. A trolling nod to the notion some have that his crossing over into the boxing world is nothing more than a farce. But at least on the surface, today, he looks like a boxer. And nothing might aid that visual more than the man by his side: Mike Tyson.
Tyson watches intently and occasionally stops Ngannou and his coach Dewey Cooper to demonstrate a technique. That Tyson power is still there, but Tyson’s instructions are surprising.
“I don’t like power,” Tyson says. “Power only matters and if you can land it.”
WHEN NGANNOU WAS 10 years old, he used to tell the people of Batie, his small village in Cameroon, that his dream was to become a professional heavyweight boxer someday — like his idol, “Iron” Mike Tyson.
It was, as people told him, a ridiculous thought. Batie, with a population of mere thousands, had no boxing gym. Ngannou didn’t own a television.
But he fell in love with Tyson, even without seeing him throw a punch. Tyson was such a global icon at the time, during the mid-’90s, stories of his ferociousness and power traveled all the way to the corners of Central Africa. But those stories were all the 10-year-old Ngannou knew him by.
“I just knew him by name,” Ngannou told ESPN. “I had never seen him in my life.”
