I was threatened with deportation and could have faced FIVE YEARS in prison for being gay now I’m making pro boxing bow
OLYMPIC icon Cindy Ngamba was once threatened with deportation to Cameroon, where gay women face five years in prison.
Now the 25-year-old has a Paris 2024 bronze medal — the Refugee Team’s first ever — and makes her pro debut at the Royal Albert Hall on March 7.
The 75kg star was just ten when her dad brought her over and set up home in Bolton.
But because she lacked the correct paperwork, she has never had a British passport.
Even when Team GB were desperate for her to represent them, red tape blocked it.
The lowest point came when Ngamba and her brother went for their weekly sign-in at a Manchester immigration office but were split up, handcuffed and almost returned to the country they left years before.
With a beautiful smile, Ngamba said: “That was in 2019. It’s amazing how life works.
“I always knew there would be a light at the end of the tunnel. I just didn’t know when.
“I just had hope. Then the Refugee Organisation came out of nowhere, I grabbed the opportunity and qualified for Paris — and I never let it go.”
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Once Ngamba got official refugee status in 2020, she was able to work and attend university, earning a degree in Crime and Criminal Justice.
But without Home Office backing, she still could not fight for her adopted country.
Incredibly, Ngamba never resented the UK for rejecting her and is still hopeful that, by 2026, she can finally be classed as a British citizen.
She said: “I came to the UK as a small child, without my mum, so I had to become my own parent and I grew up before I was legally an adult.
“That’s sink or swim. And it felt like common sense, to me, to suck it up and swim.
“Everyone has a story and it’s whether you decide to give up or keep going.”
In these horribly dark days of far-right political progress and rampant anti-immigration propaganda stinking out social media, there is something magnificent about an African, lesbian refugee making her professional debut at the UK’s most prestigious venue.
Opened by Queen Victoria in 1871, a lectern for legendary Winston Churchill speeches and the home of The Proms, the Royal Albert Hall has housed much more than the boxing heroes Ngamba adores.
“You keep naming all of these legends because I watched them all on YouTube and analyzed them all,” she says after we add Naseem Hamed, Joe Calzaghe and Michael Watson to the list.
“To box on this event, and at the Royal Albert Hall would be amazing, I want to get this new journey into the pro game rolling.
“A few companies are interested in telling my story with documentaries but my job is to train and work in camp.
“Take all of those nice extra things out of the way and I am a fighter and a boxer who needs to run and spar and fight.
“It’s beautiful that my story might be getting told but I was a boxer and a fighter before all this and I will be a fighter after it.”