Francis Ngannou’s journey to fighting superstardom has seen him go from working in gold mines as a child in his native Cameroon, to crossing the Sahara to reach Europe, to becoming the UFC heavyweight champion and fighting some of the finest boxers of his generation.

But when he fights on Saturday night, he will not only be taking on Renan Ferreira for the Professional Fighters League (PFL) Super Fights heavyweight crown, he will also be testing his desire to keep fighting after the devastating loss of his 15-month-old son Kobe earlier this year.

The mixed martial arts (MMA) fighter, a soft-spoken giant who long held the record for hardest punch ever recorded at the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) – equivalent to the horsepower of a family car – felt powerless after Kobe’s sudden death in April from an undiagnosed brain malformation.

As he struggled to process the loss, everything seemed meaningless and he contemplated retirement, but he decided to fight at least one more time for Kobe, who he had named after the late Los Angeles Lakers NBA star Kobe Bryant.

“It’s motivation that I really wish I wouldn’t have had, but, unfortunately, that’s my motivation today,” the 38-year-old told Al Jazeera, speaking via Zoom from Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, where he will make his PFL debut and fight his first MMA bout in nearly three years.

“I think this [kind of loss] is something that you are never the same after,” he said. “It’s just about how to find a way to roll with it because you cannot sit around and wait for it to go away. And it’s part of you now, it’s a new life. You feel like a new person.

“[That’s why] I think this fight will serve for me to discover myself again, to see where I am in terms of life, in terms of competition, to see if I still have it, to see if I can continue fighting.”

Read the rest of this story published by Al Jazeera English here.