Ngannou was born and raised in the village of Batié, Cameroon. He lived in poverty and had no formal education. Ngannou's parents divorced when he was six and he was sent to live with his aunt. At the age of 10, Ngannou began working in a sand quarry in Batié due to lack of funds.[At a young age, several gangs from his village approached him to join them. However, Ngannou refused and instead decided to do something positive and use his father's negative reputation as a street fighter as motivation for boxing.
At the age of 22, Ngannou began training in boxing, despite his family's initial disapproval. After a year of training, Ngannou stopped training due to illness. [He worked various odd jobs to make ends meet until the age of 26 when he decided to move to Paris, France to pursue professional boxing. He was jailed for two months in Spain for crossing. Once he reached Paris, he had no money, no friends, and no place to live. After living homeless on the streets of Paris, Ngannou found his way to a boxing club where he had a trainer who understood his situation. Met Didier Carment (cousin of Francis Carment). Carmont convinced the gym to let him train at no cost, and introduced Ngannou to MMA. In addition, Ngannou became a volunteer at Lo Chorba, a non-profit organization in Paris. When his boxing gym closed for the summer, Khater Yenbou, director of Lo Chorba, introduced Ngannou to Fernand Lopez and the MMA Factory. Being a fan of Mike Tyson, Ngannou was initially interested in learning how to box, but Lopez saw his potential in MMA and convinced him to try MMA instead.] Lopez gave Ngannou some MMA gear and trained at the gym at no cost to him. Allowed to be and lay down and thus began Ngannou's MMA career.
Reflecting on his journey across continents and his decision to become an MMA fighter, Ngannou said:
When I started, I had nothing. Nothing. I wanted everything. But when you start [making money], you start adding things: I want this, I want this, I want that. But the goal is not to collect things. The goal is to do something big. Finish the dream you started.
I want to help my family, first, of course, but then I want to give opportunities to children in my country like me who have a dream to become a doctor or something. If I reach my dream, it will give me the opportunity to help those in my country who have their own dreams and have nothing else to fulfill them.
I want to give some chance to children like me who dream about this sport and who don't have the same chance as me. When I was in Cameroon, I brought a lot of materials for boxing, MMA to open a gym. Now I bought a big space to start the gym.
Many children in Cameroon now have a dream because of me. They say, 'I'm going to be a champion in MMA. I'll box like Francis' because they saw me as a kid. I had nothing. I had no chance. Today they see me, they dream. They think they can do something. Although they are so poor, they can do something in life. … It's not easy. It is very difficult, but it is possible.
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