‘How do you deal with such a thing?’: The heartbreaking death of MMA champ Francis Ngannou’s baby son, explained

On Saturday, Oct. 19, Francis Ngannou returned to combat sports after a six-month absence. The 38-year-old Cameroonian mixed martial artist had lost his previous two fights — ambitious boxing bouts with superstar heavyweights Tyson Fury and Anthony Joshua, respectively — but successfully defeated Brazilian fighter Renan Ferreira by knockout at the Professional Fighters League event PFL Super Fights: Battle of the Giants in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. The victory won him the inaugural PFL Super Fights Heavyweight Championship.

Ngannou’s half-year break came in the wake of the tragic death of his 15-month-old son Kobe on April 27, which the MMA star announced on his Instagram on April 29.

In the utterly heartbreaking post, Ngannou described how he “shouted his name over and over but he’s not responding.” He followed that by saying, “Life is so unfair to hit us where it hurts the most. How do you deal with such a thing? How can you live with it?”

At the time of Kobe’s devastating passing, no cause of death was disclosed. But do we now know what caused it to happen?

What happened to Francis Ngannou’s son?

In a recent conversation on the Joe Rogan Experience MMA Show, Ngannou revealed that an undiagnosed brain malformation had caused Kobe’s premature death.

Ngannou told the host, “He has some malformation on his brain, which is something that we didn’t know. He passed out twice. The first time was in Cameroon. We took him to the hospital. They didn’t find anything. The second time was in [Saudi Arabia], we took him to the hospital. They ran a lot of exams; they didn’t do anything. After all those exams, they gave him some medicine, that he’s going to be okay. Nothing to worry about. Because at first, they even thought about asthma. They gave, like, a ventilator, and then afterward, after some research, they took it out. It [made me] confident.”

Despite that confidence, the failure to discover what was wrong with Kobe ultimately proved fatal, and he lost consciousness before passing away. When it happened, Ngannou was having a cycling session at a gym, and he sensed something was wrong. Upon getting through to his brother, he learned the horrifying news that would change his life forever.

The former UFC Heavyweight Champion wasn’t sure he’d ever get over his monumental loss or be able to fight again. Following his victory over Ferreira, he told TMZ, “I didn’t feel like there would be a time that it’s going to go away, where it’s going to be okay. It’s one of those things that you just realize at the beginning that you better learn how to roll with it because it will always be there.”

His story is inspirational, and he’s truly a man to be admired. Ngannou’s life had been difficult long before he endured the loss of his son, and it’s further testament to his character that he could not only step back into competitive fighting following Kobe’s passing but also defeat his opponent emphatically to win a new title. We wish him well in the future.