About three years ago, Francis
Ngannou looked like he might be a fighter who falls victim to
his own hype.
After beginning his Ultimate Fighting Championship tenure with six
consecutive victories, Ngannou was exposed in a five-round decision
loss to Stipe
Miocic for the heavyweight title at UFC 220. His ensuing
Octagon appearance was a baffling, action-starved loss to Derrick
Lewis at UFC 226 that hurt the stock of both of the division’s
most powerful knockout artists.
After the second of those defeats, UFC president Dana White
speculated that Ngannou began to get a big head during his rise
to stardom.
“I think that he had a pretty quick rise here and obviously the
fight over Alistair
Overeem catapulted him,” White said after UFC 226. “Everybody
was talking about him. I thought he was going to be the next guy. I
think his ego ran away with him. Big time. I can tell you that his
ego absolutely did run away with him. And the minute that happens
to you in the fight game, you see what happens. You start to fall
apart.”
Ngannou regrouped after that humbling stretch to post a five-bout
winning streak that included first-round stoppages of Curtis
Blaydes, Cain
Velasquez, Junior dos
Santos, Jairzinho
Rozenstruik and culminated in a knockout of Stipe
Miocic in their rematch at UFC 260
on Saturday at the UFC Apex in Las Vegas.
It was an understandably emotional moment for Ngannou, who had to
silence the critics after coming up short during his first run at
glory.
“I felt like I was drowning and I had to struggle back, but now,
here we are,” Ngannou said. “We are here, we got it done. It’s just
amazing. I think I have to really take the time back to collect my
emotion and to really feel it. Right now it is just all over the
place. I assume this is going to be the biggest thing.
“I just haven’t had enough time to feel it. Absolutely, it feels
great, but as for right now, I can’t think far ahead,” he
continued. “My mind is just right here, right now. Man, this is
great. The emotion of it, thinking about everyone behind it. It’s
not just about the belt, it’s about what it represents. It’s the
principle, it’s the ethic, the dream, the life. It’s about the
people that are behind me, the people that have joined me in the
dream and my journey, who believed me and put their hands on the
dirt to get this done. It’s all about it. This is something way
beyond me.”
Ngannou knew he always wanted another chance to prove himself
against Miocic, who owns promotional records at heavyweight for
most successful title defenses and most victories in championship
bouts.
“Even if it wasn’t for the title shot, I would have liked to have a
rematch against Stipe,” Ngannou admitted. “I always wanted my title
fight to be against him since I lost to him in January 2018. I
wanted that revenge and as his résumé speaks for itself, he is the
greatest of all time and it is good to make a statement out of
that.”
Ngannou appeared to be much improved as he adopted a measured
approach against Miocic in the opening stanza of Saturday’s
headliner. Perhaps the most notable moment of the opening five
minutes occurred when he sprawled on a Miocic takedown and punished
his adversary with heavy ground-and-pound.
“I was very confident about it,” Ngannou said of his wrestling.
“Obviously, I didn’t want to go down on my back, but I was even
thinking of taking him down, because we’ve been working on this a
lot and I really believe that I can give him a hard time on the
ground game, on the grappling.”
When the opportunity to finish arose, Ngannou was ready. A left
hook from “The Predator” put Miocic on wobbly legs. Though the
Ohio-based firefighter answered with a hard right of his own,
Ngannou ate it and and folded Miocic with another vicious left
hook. The Cameroonian-born Frenchman then punctuated his triumph
with one final hammerfist 52 seconds into Round 2.
“I saw how he fell and I felt like he was hurt, but he’s tough, so
I didn’t really want to give him any chance,” Ngannou said. “That’s
why I followed that.”
In the aftermath, Ngannou dedicated his victory to those who stuck
with him when it looked like he might be a flash in the pan.
Instead, Ngannou is the unofficial “Baddest Man on the Planet” and
the 17th heavyweight champion in UFC history.
“Today, this is not just for me. This is for all of us. For people
that put their hand on the dirt and believed in this, people from
around the world, for my fans, for everyone who believed it,
because that’s very important,” he said. “Those people give you the
strength when you need it, extra motivation when you’re tired and
maybe just want to skip on training or something. You think about
that and that gives you motivation to keep going forward.”