Most male lions never live to see their tenth birthday. The ones who win a pride usually keep it for two to four years. Then a younger, bigger group of males shows up and pushes them out. And a lion who loses his land rarely dies quietly. He starves, or the rivals who replaced him kill him, or hyenas run him down.
Scarface held his ground in Kenya's Maasai Mara for close to a decade. When he died in June 2021, it was of old age, at around 14, lying in the grass.
He didn't do it alone. For a male lion, survival comes down to numbers, and Scarface had three brothers: Morani, Sikio, and Hunter. People called them the Four Musketeers. In 2012 the four of them took over the Marsh Pride, the lions the BBC had made famous years before. Four males hunting and fighting together is close to unbeatable. It let them hold a wide stretch of land along the Mara River and hold off the younger males who kept trying to take it.
The scar came from that life. He tore up his right eye in a fight over territory, and it never fully healed. It split open more than once, and vets had to treat it so it wouldn't get infected. That torn-up face made him one of the most photographed lions on earth. Guides could pick him out from across the plain.
You've probably seen the stats that get posted with his photos: 400 hyenas killed, 130 rival lions beaten, never once defeated. None of it is on record. The people who tracked him for years say those numbers are made up. He was a hard fighter, but the giant kill counts are just a story.
By the end, the brotherhood was gone. Two of his brothers had died, and the group that kept them all safe had fallen apart. Scarface spent his last months mostly alone, thin, limping on old wounds, slowly losing the ground he'd held for years.
Then he walked. In his final days he covered more than 15 miles, heading back toward the corner of the Mara where he was born. Photographers watched three young males come near him at the end. They didn't attack. They let the old lion lie down. He died there, quiet and undisturbed, in the place he started.
A wild male lion dying peacefully of old age is one of the rarest ways to go in the wild. Almost none of them get it. Scarface did.
Flo Balogun vs Belgium:
0 Goals/Assists
0 Key Passes
0 Dribbles
8 Possessions Lost
Served Suspension on Field
SERVED THE SUSPENSION ON THE FIELD, INTEGRITY. 👏👏👏