Filed under: Blue Corner , Featured Videos , News , UFC You may have heard the story of how UFC heavyweight contender Francis Ngannou left his home in Cameroon and ended up homeless in Paris until the day he walked into a boxing gym looking for a trainer, but chances are you don’t know the full story. As Bleacher Report’s Chad Dundas (who also happens to be my podcast co-host on the Co-Main Event ) informs us, Ngannou’s rise is even more inspiring than we knew, especially since it begins in the somewhat treacherous sand mines of Cameroon, where Ngannou (10-1 MMA, 5-0 UFC) worked as a child laborer : It was grueling and dangerous work, spending hours shoveling sand into the backs of trucks so it could be shipped to big cities for use in construction. Sometimes he would stand all day in water up to his shins, scooping sand out of the riverbed. Other days would be spent at the bottom of a steep quarry, where large chunks of earth often broke free from the high cliffs and tumbled down onto workers. But even as a kid, Ngannou had big dreams. He wanted to be a boxer, like his hero Mike Tyson, but when that didn’t seem possible in Cameroon, he left his country to become homeless on the streets of Paris
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You think you know Francis Ngannou’s story, but you don’t know the half of it yet – MMA Junkie