#1 UFC heavyweight contender Francis Ngannou appeared recently on the Joe Rogan Experience and talked about his upcoming fight with division champion Stipe Miocic. That inevitably leads to talk of their first fight, a Unanimous Decision loss at UFC 220 on January 20, 2018.
I had two different feelings from that fight, said Ngannou. First, obviously I was very upset and disappointed that I didn’t win the fight. As everyone who is fighting for the title, you want to go out there victorious. But to be honest, I always look in that fight since the fight day, just after the fight, I look at it and now I’m like, ‘This is good.’ I learned too much in that fight because even though I was on the level, fighting for the world title, I still have some missing parts in my game and in my experience.
I remember I was asking myself, questioning myself like, ‘Okay, how does it look like to go into three rounds?’ Basically, I was going into a potential five rounds and I’ve never been in three rounds. How did it look like, how is it to prepare for this kind of fight? I had a fight like six weeks earlier so I was having a lot of questions. Then after that fight I was like, ‘Okay, I get it.’
I didn’t spend enough time in the Octagon to have that experience. Even though it was almost four years since I’d been doing the sport but I didn’t spend enough time in the Octagon to have that experience. I think in one night I covered more than what I’d been spending in the Octagon for the rest of my career.
Some people get here when they’ve been having athlete lives for a long time. Maybe wrestling, maybe doing some different sport at school, at college, but I never got into that stuff. Growing up I was just finding my way to survive and then I end up finding myself in somewhere that I never been there so the experience was just crazy.
For the Stipe fight, I think I rush for the first round. Now I’m like, ‘Damn, I had five rounds. Why should I rush and run out of gas?’ Looking at that fight, I watch that fight, I see the guy look like me, but I don’t recognize myself because it’s not the way that I fight. I look back at other fights and it looks like two different persons. The way that I used to fight I was kind of calm, I’d push the fight and let myself get into fight and if there’s an opportunity – most of the time my opponent will be the first to attack. But this one I just rushed in there. So I’m like, I should have calmed down.
Ngannou entered his first title shot having in just one year demolished Anthony Hamilton, Andrei Arlovski, and Alistair Overeem in a combined time of 5:11, earning two performance bonuses. Ngannou lost his next fight too, a fan-unfriendly Unanimous Decision to Derrick Lewis. But then the Next Big Thing emerged again. In an 18 month span, The Predator beat Curtis Blaydes, Cain Velasquez, Junior dos Santos, and Jairzinho Rozenstruik in a combined time of 2:42, earning three performance bonuses. And now he gets a title shot at the 38-year-old Miocic.
Although Ngannou is not very much younger at 34, he’s far younger in ring years. “The Predator’s” years spent toiling in a sand mind made him stronger. Miocic’s decade in MMA, which followed many years in folkstyle wrestling and reaching the quarter-final in the Golden Gloves nationals, has made him stronger, but likely took a toll, too. Francis Ngannou appears poised to finally become champion of the world.
I knew it was going to happen, said Ngannou. It was frustrating, the waiting time, all those things uncertain, but I knew it was going to happen. Guess what, there’s only one thing that’s going to make it happen. Get your ass in the gym, work, get out there and win the fight, get a title shot. At some point, it’s going to happen.
h/t Jed Meshew for MMA Fighting
