Last year UFC welterweight champion Kamaru Usman became the first African-born champion in the league. Israel Adesanya was next. And there are more to come, with Cameroon-born, France-based Francis Ngannou likely to take the heavyweight title in time.

“There’s just something about us, and where we’re from, that connects us,” said Usman to Agence France-Presse via Straits Times. “When I see these guys there a sense of camaraderie that you can’t explain. You know deep down inside they have felt what you have felt and been through what you have been through.”

“There’s just so much talent coming out of Africa. I know there are kids now who see me and I look like them. They know I’ve seen their paths, I’ve walked that journey. It’s powerful.”

“All over the world, we forget sometimes that sports bridge the gap between cultures and between nations. That’s what happened to me. Starting to excel in sport, it started to be that I wasn’t just that little Nigerian boy, I was the wrestler who happens to come from Nigeria.”

In 1989 Usman’s father Muhammed Nasiru left his family behind in Nigeria to make a better life for them in the USA. Kamaru was two years old, and it wasn’t until he was eight that his father had the wherewithal to bring his family to their new home. Then in 2010 his father was convicted of healthcare fraud charges, and served nearly 10 years of a 15-year sentence. Kamaru is now, again, reunited with his father.

Usman’s father – a former solider – had left his young family behind in Nigeria in 1989 to forge a new life for them in the United States.

He was two years old at the time and it would take six years for his father to find the financial security to be able to reunite his family.

“I dealt with it but it was tough,” said Usman. “As an African boy, there’s a need to excel for your parents. I was like that. It happen when I was becoming nationally recognized.

“I was looking for that approval [from him] and I didn’t have my dad to rely on anymore. It bothered me for years, but we were always close and it stayed that way. Having him here now, the dynamic of our relationship is tremendous.”

“To leave your kids and come to American to earn you visa, to give them a better life, it takes guts. It takes a hustler, someone who is motivated. To go through what he has been through and still be positive and have his spirits up is inspiration to me every day.”