THE CHOSEN ONE
T he drive to get to the gym where Christian Mbilli trains in Montreal feels like a sizzle reel for Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous: Quebec Edition . Multistory houses sit several normal driveway lengths behind monogrammed gates, which open to release cars that never seem to be more than a year old. Some of the residents are indeed famous, but all of them are rich, strolling through the spotless sidewalks in luxury athleisure with their goldendoodles and chihuahuas. It’s about as far away from where Mbilli’s life began, both geographically and socioeconomically, as one could possibly imagine. When Mbilli was a child, he was strolling barefoot around his Cameroonian village with the family pygmy goats while his mother, Marie Thérèse, who conceived him as a teenager, raised both him and her own sister. Mbilli couldn’t have known at the time that there was anything unusual about the crushing work his mother was undertaking or the lifestyle they lived. He wouldn’t have known that his polygamous grandfather had determined that the daughter of his first wife would do all of the family chores, forcing her into what Mbilli has
CHRISTIAN MBILLI HAS WALKED A HARD PATH, FROM CAMEROON TO MONTREAL TO THE RANKS OF THE SUPER MIDDLEWEIGHT ELITE, AND NOW – FINALLY – HE STANDS ON THE DOORSTEP OF DESTINY WITH THE CHANCE TO BEAT CANELO ALVAREZ By Corey Erdman
RINGMAGAZINE.COM 37
Made with FlippingBook - Online magazine maker