“Who Wants To Sex Mutombo” is REAL

A seven-foot tall college student, who hails from the Congo and has a voice similar to the Cookie Monster, walks into a bar and shouts — “who wants to sex Mutombo?” With a lift of his hands and a giant smile, one (or two) girls take that college student up on his offer and leave the bar holding hands.

My earliest memory of this Dikembe Mutombo urban legend dates back to 2005, when I stumbled on a website dedicated to this story. The website was appropriately named, whowantstosexmutombo.com, and although it’s no longer in existence I was able to track down a cached version of the website from April 10th, 2005. It contains the earliest record of the event.

In the summer of 2001, a listener called in to Jim Rome’s syndicated radio show, at the time known as “The Jungle” or “The Jim Rome Show.” The caller reported that he was in Georgetown one night in the early 1990’s, when basketball player Dikembe Mutombo was a big star there. The caller was in a bar frequented by Georgetown students, when Mutombo came in the door. The bar went silent as everyone turned to look at the 7'2" African. Mutombo responded to the attention by bellowing, in a deep and echoing African accent, “WHO WANTS TO SEX MUTOMBO?!??”

This urban legend has struggled to gain steam over the years because the setup sounds like the start of a cheesy joke and has never been publicly confirmed. Mutombo, himself, denied the story in 2014 when he was asked directly about it on Dan Le Batard’s ESPN show. He called the rumor “crap” and gave his trademark finger wag to deny the event.

But Alonzo Mourning changed everything.

You may recall that Mourning and Mutombo were teammates at Georgetown from 88–91. If this story had any steam, Mourning would be one of the select few who could deny or confirm the actual events.

Mourning’s laughter and statements like, “there is some truth to that” and “it worked,” are the first public acknowledgement of the urban legend truth.