THE CHOSEN ONE
since described as “the life of a slave.” One day, while working at a restaurant in Yaoundé, Marie Thérèse met a French engineer with whom she had instant chemistry. Before long, she moved to France and immediately began the legal process of getting citizenship for her son. For over two years, Mbilli lived with a series of relatives alone in Cameroon, awaiting the day he would be reunited with his mother in a whole new world. By the time he arrived in Montargis, 50 miles south of Paris, at the age of 11, he was both an excellent athlete and a dedicated student. Even though his mother couldn’t be with him during those years, the values she instilled in him remained, and he adhered to them. A standout soccer player at USM Montargis, Mbilli was already becoming known for his cardiovascular ability and muscular physique. But schoolyard bullies at Renoir College don’t necessarily care about athletic scouting
reports. Mbilli was Black, from another country and didn’t have a sibling to defend him. At the age of 15, Mbilli stepped – barefoot – into a boxing gym for the first time, looking to learn how to defend himself. There were early struggles, of course. Boxing wasn’t like the street fights he’d been in, at least not after the first minute, which left even a prodigiously talented long-distance runner such as him winded. He took his lumps in his first sparring session, and before his first amateur bout, he lost two kilograms the night before simply due to stress sweat in his sleep. But ultimately, depending on who you ask, Mbilli became a member of France’s national amateur team either two months or five months after velcroing a pair of gloves on his hands for the first time. L ike many boxing gyms, Pound-4- Pound Boxing is in a converted warehouse, its door tucked at
the end of a corridor on the third floor above a strength and conditioning facility. There is no outward signage indicating that it’s there. A lineup of fans begins at the entrance of the building and wraps around the block, fading into the distance just as the brick exterior has faded from red to a shade of yellow. As this is the place a Ring Magazine reporter has come to interview a fighter set to face the biggest star in the sport later this year, it’s reasonable to assume the crowd is there to see him too. “Est-ce ici le club de boxe?” A security guard in a black suit and an IFB earpiece stares blankly, but a gymgoer nearby overhears the confusion and indicates that the boxing gym is upstairs. Two scenarios seem likely:
A war with Lester Martinez ended in a draw, the only blemish on Mbilli’s record.
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