I was able to adjust relatively quickly because I still spoke English back when I was in Nigeria, and by my second year here, I got into my first fight at school, and I realized the power of fighting. And I was like, man, this is crazy, this place. ![]() We’re like, damn, where are the white folks at? (Laughs) Where's everybody? And then I think I came in right before winter, so it was cold enough to not snow, but too cold for an African. I ended up in PG County, Maryland, which is the blackest county you could find, where everybody looks like me. I didn't even see the rest of America because we didn't have the right papers to be flying around. “I'm thinking it's either going to be New York, where it’s snowing all the time or we're going to be on the beaches of Florida because that’s all you see in the movies you're not seeing just a regular neighborhood. “It was a culture shock due to the fact that the most I knew about this country was just off movies,” he said. That fight continues, even as Yusuff rapidly climbs up the 145-pound ladder. And as soon as Yusuff started his prizefighting journey as an adult and began getting money and a platform, the money was being sent home and the platform was used not to promote himself but to make it clear that he wanted his family to join him in the States. ![]() What adds to Yusuff’s unique story and the idea that he was made for life as a professional athlete is that while his mother chose him and his brother to make the trip to America, there were more siblings in Nigeria. ![]() No one knows that better than the 29-year-old Yusuff, a Lagos native who arrived in the United States with his mother and younger brother when he was nine. “So I always asked myself, man, what if I just never changed the channel that day? What would I be doing now? So it is one of those things where if I just never saw the UFC on TV that day when I changed the channel, what would I be doing now, let alone if I was in Nigeria? I have no idea.”įate is a funny thing. “When I was in fifth grade, I got bored and switched the channel to Spike TV and saw The Ultimate Fighter,” said Yusuff.
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