As soon as one Usman claims his claim, today, Pound-for-Pound Best Fighter, another Usman is about to make his first move on the MMA stage.
Mohammed Osman, the young brother of UFC welterweight champion Kamru Osman, is a rising prospect in the game. He will make his Professional Fighters League debut on Thursday at the Oceanian Casino Resort in Atlantic City, N.J., in the first leg of the PFL regular season when he faces Brandon Sayles as part of the ESPN-Aired Men’s Card.
But don’t consider younger Usman (7-1, five finishes) as “younger” brother. He is a heavyweight heist weighing in at 239 pounds on Wednesday. And don’t go thinking that he is a type of heavyweight whose cardio falls off a cliff after a few minutes, if there is no finish.
“They call me ‘The Motor’ for a reason,” Usman told The Post via Zoom on Tuesday. “… my coaches always tell me that I move like welterweight, middleweight, and I’m hovering at 240, 245 [pounds]”
A relative of his highly accomplished brother, who defended his fourth title last month with an explosive knockout from George Masvidal, 32-year-old Mohammed Osman is still early in a fighting career that comes after the end of his first professional athletic pursuit: Football . In fact, young Usman had not even started training for more than a year, when Kamaru won the 21st season of “The Ultimate Fighter”, beginning a 14-fight and counting stint competing in the UFC.
Kamru Usman told The Post before the April 24 victory over Masvidil that he is always more excited and more nervous for Mohammed’s quarrel. He also loves the fact that the heavyweight has found a home in the Colorado-based Elevation Fight team, training with some of the top bigs in the game.
“His improvements are outstanding,” said Kamru Osman. “I’m looking at him, and I’m like, ‘Wow!” He shocks me every time I see him. It’s incredible being with people like Alistair Overim, Curtis Blades, and some of the people at his gym, about training. “
Mohammed Osman, who was born in Nigeria like his brother but grew up in Texas, played defensive end at the NCAA FBS level, first in Houston, and finished in Arizona after a stop at Navarro College in Texas. As a senior with the Wildcats in 2011, he saw action in 11 games, tackled 19 totals, threw a sack and forced one.
While it troubled the NFL’s dreams, those people did not work for him. He was playing professionally in Sweden for a time before moving on from the game. But he praised the role in which he played football.[setting] “Me in MMA” on this trip to me.
“When that door closed [on football], And I saw that my brother was having a lot of success [in MMA], And I looked at my body and I’m like, ‘I can run and jump, so why waste this perfectly beautiful body God bless me by sitting around or trying to get a desk job?’ “Usman says with laughter. “I said, ‘Let me get on the train, and let me get on it.” And see where we are now: here we are [in PFL]”
Osman, at one time a skilled high school wrestler in Texas, began training toward a professional MMA career near the end of 2016, around the same time that his brother earned his third UFC victory after winning the “TUF”. With nearly five months of training in the sport, he made the jump to the professional ranks directly in May 2017 with a first round submission win.
“Wow, you didn’t do any amateur fighting?” Usman is being asked at that time.
‘I am already a professional football player. Why upgrade yourself to be an amateur fighter? ” He replied. … … We are gonna hit, amateurs or supporters. If I’m going to be a hit, I’m going to be a hit with a pro record. “
At first, everything in the cage felt as if taunting for Osman is moving at a pace he was playing a draw compared to when he started playing football.
Usman said, “My eyes could not calm down fast enough.” “Like, you’re looking at someone in front of you, but you’re not really looking at them. You know what I mean? Your eyes can’t focus on the person in front of you for what you want.
“So I feel like, over time, I’ve finally developed my game, where I can actually see this opponent in front of me, move around, see my punches landing on him. . So it’s really able to control the anxiety that you get in the cage. And that’s where I’m so much better.
With the regional phase early in his career, Osman begins his race in a major promotion against a 40-year-old Seles (5-1, four finishes), a U.S. Army joint instructor who has not competed in more than three years Has Osman defined his opponent’s more advanced age as a factor, instead praising Sayles’ “mental fate”.
Not that it matters to Usman, who believes that his fighting style that is aggressive on the move and being aggressive makes him different from the Sels’ previous opponents.
“I come forward. A lot of people that he fights and squirm around. Osman says, “Not me.” “As soon as we start that fight, I’m going straight to his chest. And either he is going to come back, or we are going to come in the middle. “
While Mohammed Osman has a long way to go to capture his brother’s admiration, the bank eventually aims to unite him on heavyweight Usman. He tells all of his siblings (brother Kasetu, a former collegiate football player, and sister Ashlin, who played Division I volleyball), because contestants always want to outdo each other. And he doesn’t point out that in a way he topped Kamru athletically years ago.
“We will go to the wrestling room in our high school, and he is third in the state. I went and finished second in the state. So you will see his name, and then you will see my name next to him,” Osman Garvey. Says along. “We fight each other, and it brings out the best in me.
“Just the competitive nature of us and our family and just how we are, is the strength behind everything we do, which is so competitive that we don’t want to lose or fail in anything.”
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