The Most Dangerous Fighter in the World Is Getting Even More Dangerous

How Kamaru Usman—a scrawny Nigerian kid who migrated to Texas—became the UFC’s mightiest pound for-pound champion.

- CHRIS GAYOMALI

ONE OF THE things that separates Kamaru Usman—the UFC welterweight champion and world number one pound-for-pound—from other fighters is the sublime efficiency of his tool kit. Take his second-scariest punch: the right cross.

He landed a big one last year on Jorge Masvidal to close out their second UFC fight. The shot was the result of a hand trap that Kamaru had been meticulously plotting since the first round, in which he used his left hand to yank Jorge’s right arm away from his head, and when the cross was deployed, Kamaru really committed and threw all his weight behind it, stepping through the punch like he was the Kool-Aid Man and there were thirsty children on the other side. The set-up was flawlessly executed. Beautiful maths. The punch cracked poor Jorge so hard that his body went limp and the sweat from his brow flung itself into the air and instantly phase-changed into a cloud of ghostly vapour. On television the effect resembled something like a spirit leaving its corporeal form, ascending to heaven.

But Kamaru Usman’s real best punch is actually his jab, which he can throw with either hand and might be the best jab in all of mixed martial arts: precise, off-rhythm, rangy, with the percussive power of a train piston behind it. It juts out with zero tell, like a cuckoo from a broken clock. Most fighters use their jabs to probe; to distract; to set up other, more damaging follow-up blows. But the thing about Kamaru is that he can also finish you with his jab— as he did in a title defense last year against Gilbert Burns, a former training partner, whose neck is as thick as a fire hydrant. Kamaru’s southpaw jab squeaked in between Gilbert’s guard and snapped his head back, causing him to fall onto his backside, where he was soon finished.