In 2016, Janibek Alimkhanuly and Anauel Ngamissengue found themselves listed next to one another in the bracket of the 75kg Olympic boxing draw. Both men had achieved their dream of making to the Olympic Games, Alimkhanuly representing Kazakhstan and Ngamissengue flying the flag of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Alimkhanuly was matched up against Anthony Fowler, Ngamissengue against Ilyas Abbadi, and assuming they won, they would face one another in the second round.

It's here that their paths would divert before intersecting again in different ways. Ngamissengue fell in the opening round, while Alimkhanuly advanced to the quarter finals before being eliminated by Kamran Shakhsuvarly. Janibek would make his professional debut later that year, while Ngamissengue would stick around in the amateurs until 2019 full-time, making a few more stops back in the unpaid ranks, as he did in 2023, looking for another crack at the Olympic Games.

Within six fights, Alimkhanuly was already fighting in ten rounders, quickly apparent that he was a world-class operator who would race towards a piece of a world title by 2022, snatched up by a major promoter in Top Rank and given consistent national television exposure. Ngamissengue wouldn’t have such luck. Two weeks after scoring a knockout in his pro debut, he found himself unhoused in Northern France, living on the streets unsure of his path forward.

There was no reason to believe that the stories of Alimkhanuly and Ngamissengue would ever intersect again—once Olympic bracket-mates but otherwise with nothing in common other than being on the same list of hundreds of middleweights on BoxRec. Alimkhanuly became one of the best, if not the best, middleweight on the planet and was regularly fighting on ESPN, while Ngamissengue toiled on the French club circuit, fighting in chateaus, circuses and gyms, often against novices and fighters with losing records in order to stay active.

In 2023, having not fought in close to a year, Ngamissengue took an opportunity on the Oleksandr Usyk-Daniel Dubois undercard against the undefeated Fiodor Czerkaszyn. The win helped net him a ranking in the world rankings by the WBO and IBF. Behind the scenes, the Ring Ratings Committee considered inserting him in the divisional top ten, but opted to include Denzel Bentley instead. Close to a year later, he was back staying busy against the 12-32-2 Sandro Jajanidze at the Complexe Sportif Alain Mallon, which also houses judo and Zumba classes.

Nearly a year after that, the big break Ngamissengue was looking for arrived. The man whom he would have met in the second round of the 2016 Olympics had he won his opening round bout needed an opponent for a unified middleweight title defense in Kazakhstan. With a No. 7 ranking in the IBF and a No. 13 ranking in the WBO, Ngamissengue met the requirements, and now would be face to face with the fighter he’d hoped to see in Rio.

Talent disparities in boxing are a funny thing, whether they’re rooted in a gap in natural ability or an accumulation of good circumstance and privilege. Fighters who not only came from the same starting place in the elite amateur ranks, but also reside in the same Top 15 rankings in the pros, can be of vastly different calibres.

In team sports, even the worst team in the league once in a while beats the league's best in regular season action. In boxing, truly great fighters sometimes have to make dramatic changes in body composition in order to find opposition that might actually be able to beat them.

It's the latter plight that Janibek has been stuck within, constantly calling out other middleweight titleholders and champions below and above him in weight, but always seeming to get a fight other than the ones he and fans alike are calling for. It’s the higher level, much more profitable version of the predicament that Ngamissengue had been in—wanting and calling for bigger fights, but never getting them.

On Saturday in Astana, the two finally came together. Despite Ngamissengue’s courageous efforts, it still wasn’t the competition that Alimkhanuly was craving. By the end of the first round, he’d dropped Ngamissengue on a pair of left hands, prompting a delayed call by the official who was briefly unsure if the knockdown was a slip or not.

As Alimkhanuly walked back to his corner, he wore a disappointed look on his face. Not one that suggested he was upset that the fight wasn’t over, but one that begged for greater resistance. It’s a look you see fighters display earlier in their careers when they’ve stopped a hapless opponent too early, a frown that says “I trained for ten straight weeks to land one left hook to the body and go home after 40 seconds.” It’s the one Janibek had on his face in his previous bout against Andrei Mikhailovich after hurting him in the second round, before mostly messing around for the next seven rounds prior to the bout finally ending.

There were similar elements at play in this bout, Janibek finding ways to amuse himself in lieu of genuine resistance. New to his non-stop social media firestorm of callouts has been his mentioning of Canelo Alvarez and David Benavidez. Perhaps in a little subliminal nod to his greater goals, he spoke of introducing more “Mexican style” techniques to his approach, working with trainer Marco Contreras for his bout and adding to his vast repertoire. Against Ngamissengue, Alimkhanuly fought almost exclusively on the inside, which might not be native to Mexico, but sure is a recurring theme in the country’s fighter’s approaches.

In the fifth round, Alimkhanuly launched a missile of a left hand that froze Ngamissengue in place. With his eyes glassy and rolling back, he wavered in front of Alimkhanuly, helpless. Alimkhanuly seemed to take a moment to consider if this was the time he wanted to end it, if there was anything else he could possibly extract from this experience, or if he wanted to simply give his home crowd the knockout they wanted then and there.

He chose the latter, and the fight was over after one more left hand.

At middleweight at least, Janibek has many contemporaries, but he’s still searching for his peers.