Impa Kasanganay's Homeless to Champion Story Ahead of PFL Austin

You've seen the kick. Everybody's seen the kick.

October 2020. Joaquin Buckley spins, plants, and throws a back kick that lands flush and folds a grown man in half in mid air. It's been replayed a million times. It won KO of the year. It's on every "greatest finishes in MMA history" list ever made. ESPN loops it. Your cousin who doesn't even watch MMA has seen it.

And here's the thing nobody ever asks. The guy on the other end of that kick, the one who went stiff before he hit the canvas? That's Impa Kasanganay. And tonight he's fighting for a world title.

Wild how that works, right? One man throws the kick and becomes a legend. The other man catches it and becomes a punchline. Same six seconds, two completely different lives.

Except Impa's story didn't end on that canvas. It basically started there.

$16 and a Farm

Let me back up, because this is the part nobody tells you.

Impa's dad came to America from the Democratic Republic of Congo with $16 in his pocket. Not sixteen thousand. Sixteen actual dollars. He worked himself into the ground to bring the rest of the family over, and Impa grew up the oldest of three kids, feeding chickens and tending cattle on a farm, listening to his dad tell stories about street fights back in Congo.

His parents wanted him in books, not cages. They pushed academics hard. They actually pictured him as a musician for a while. He ended up playing college football at Lenoir Rhyne in North Carolina and walked out with degrees in business, accounting, and finance.

So this isn't some fighter who had nothing else going on. Impa had options. He picked the hardest one.

He didn't take MMA seriously until he was around 24. And for a minute it looked like it might pay off fast, because he made the UFC by 2020.

Then Buckley happened.

The Part That Actually Hurts

Real talk for a second.

Getting knocked out on a highlight reel is embarrassing but it's survivable. Fighters lose, it happens, you move on. What came next is the part that would've broken most people.

The UFC kept him around a little longer, he picked up a submission win, then dropped a fight to Carlston Harris, and in December 2021 they cut him. And when the checks stopped, so did the roof over his head.

Impa Kasanganay, a UFC fighter one year earlier, ended up homeless. Sleeping in his car in the gym parking lot. A dude with three college degrees living out of his front seat so he could keep training.

Somebody asked him about it later and his answer tells you everything. "No, you got yourself in this situation," he said, per Newhouse Sports. "You've got to get yourself out of it."

No blaming the UFC. Just get out of it.

That's the guy fighting tonight.

From the Parking Lot to a Million Dollars

He clawed back the way you actually claw back. One win at a time on the regional scene until PFL gave him a real shot in 2023.

And then he went nuts.

Impa ran the entire 2023 PFL Light Heavyweight tournament. Knocked out Marthin Hamlet in the semis. Beat Josh Silveira in the final. Walked out of that cage a champion holding a $1 million check, barely two years removed from sleeping in a Honda.

"It's funny how I look back a year ago, I'm like, 'Life's a bit different!'" he told SunSport. Understatement of the century, bro.

He's not the only one who took that road, either. Baisangur Susurkaev was sleeping in a parking lot too before the UFC scooped him up. The grind from nothing to gold isn't rare in this sport. But the way Impa carries it is different.

Tonight: Eblen, Redemption, and a Belt

Tonight in Austin, Impa (20-6) headlines PFL Austin against Johnny "Pressure" Eblen (17-1) for the interim PFL middleweight title. First interim title in PFL history, actually. It only exists because champ Costello van Steenis pulled out hurt and Impa stepped up on the biggest stage of his life.

But this isn't just a title fight. It's a rematch. And it's personal.

These two already fought back in 2024 on the PFL vs Bellator card. Eblen took a split decision. Real close fight. And here's the detail Eblen keeps quietly skipping over: Impa dropped him in the second round. Put him on the mat. A lot of people thought Impa won that fight outright.

Eblen sees it different. He thinks the first one was basically a fluke and he's saying it to anybody who'll listen. "He's not going to beat me by decision. He's not going to outgrapple me. I don't even think he's going to outstrike me," Eblen told MMA Fighting. "I feel like he only has a puncher's chance."

Only a puncher's chance. Okay. Somebody go tell Dalton Rosta, who Impa iced in the opening round back in March.

Impa's not playing the doubt game either. He literally changed his Instagram bio to "world champion" weeks before the fight. People called it cocky, and he flipped it right back on them. "When I put that in the bio, it's not just like for people, but it's also just for God," he told MMA Fighting. "I set a goal and I'm gonna go get it."

And if you wanna call the interim belt a placeholder, he's got an answer ready for that too. "Let's say Costello decides to retire. Who's the champion now?" he said, per MMA Fighting. "It's a credit to the work that you've put in."

Why This One Matters

Here's the bigger picture.

A few years back, getting cut by the UFC was pretty much the end of the road. Where else were you gonna go? Now? Guys are building entire second careers outside the UFC and getting paid real money to do it. PFL handed Impa a million dollars and a platform to become somebody again. That does not happen in 2019.

Tonight is the perfect example. Four promotions are running on the same Saturday, and PFL is one of them, putting a five round title main event inside a real arena. The sport got big enough that a fighter the UFC threw in the trash can headline a championship card somewhere else. Rival promotions are building actual platforms now, not just surviving in the UFC's shadow.

So no, this isn't the biggest fight on the planet tonight. Du Plessis and Usman are grappling for relevance up in Oklahoma at basically the same time. But if you want the best STORY on the entire Saturday slate, it's the guy in Austin who got kicked into a meme, slept in his car, and dragged himself all the way back to a title shot.

I'm picking Impa, by the way. The power is real, he already dropped Eblen once, and those extra championship rounds only help him. Could go either way and Eblen is a legit problem, so I'm not gonna sit here and act like it's a lock. But I want it on record.

Everybody remembers the kick. After tonight, maybe they finally remember the guy who took it.

Thanks for riding with CageLore. Stay locked in!