Kamaru Usman: Daily Routine

Behind the dominance is structure: early starts, targeted camps, and a mindset built to outlast and overwhelm.

If Kamaru Usman wasn’t the UFC welterweight champion, spending his working days smashing opponents against the fence or breaking jaws of talkative rivals, he’d probably be a marriage counsellor, he admits. Quite the divergent career path.

“It’s just something that I was passionate about in college,” he said in an interview with Muscle & Fitness. “One of my favorite things to study was family studies. I loved it so much because you got the chance to study the child—the infant, the adolescent, and that development to the aging adult.”

“I really started to see the effects of the family structure and what it does to each individual, what it does to a child. And I just basically got to see the importance of a marriage and a family to build a strong foundation.”

Though it might be a long time before we see The Nigerian Nightmare sitting on a couch with a notepad mediating couple disputes. He’s currently too busy winning and defending his title. With an undefeated UFC record and three title defences so far against Colby Covington, Jorge Masvidal and Gilbert Burns, Usman is slowly creeping into Georges St-Pierre’s GOAT territory.

I want to break their soul. I want to take something away from them so that when my name comes up again, they’re just like, ‘Fuck, no. I don’t want to fight that guy again.’

Usman has always had the champion mindset and work ethic. Even before he was tapped for a title shot for the welterweight crown, he served as a backup fighter for UFC 228 which featured then-champion Tyron Woodley defending his belt against scorching up-and-comer Darren Till.