UFC heavyweight king Francis Ngannou not only risked his championship this past weekend at UFC 270, but he also risked the sort of knee injury that could have possibly cost him nearly two years of his career.
When Ngannou (17-3) entered the Octagon on Saturday night, he looked a little different. Not in terms of his physique or having a new hairdo, but he was wearing a pair of knee pads that were uncharacteristic for the “The Predator.” For the uninitiated, when fighters or athletes randomly put on braces and pads over major joints like knees and elbows, it is a tell-tale sign of an injury.
After his impressive unanimous decision victory over Ciryl Gane (10-1) in the night’s headliner, the speculation over a knee injury was confirmed when the champion told media after the bout, I had a grade 3 MCL [tear], I have a damaged ACL.”
Francis Ngannou fought with an MCL tear and damaged ACL at UFC 270
The Cameroonian’s performance despite a major knee injury, and the fact that he used a great deal of wrestling to do it, was awe-inspiring. However, in a new interview with MMAJunkie Radio, Ngannou’s head coach Eric Nicksick revealed that pulling out of the matchup on fight week was a very real possibility. And that a second opinion in the final days before the fight brought some relief to his personal concerns that his fighter could suffer a catastrophic injury during the fight.
We had kind of that come-to-Jesus moment last Friday before we left, Nicksick said. We got word from a second opinion doctor out here in LA that he was adamant that Francis should pull out. He thought that he could ultimately lose a year-and-a-half to two years after a full knee reconstruction surgery if that leg would have gone wrong. So we got that word last Friday. We had a practice that day so we all met at the [UFC Performance Institute], and that’s kind of when I just said, ‘Dude, what are we doing here? I love you, bro. You’re my brother.
“‘But as your coach, I do have to tell you what I think is right, and this is what I feel is right in this situation. But if you as the fighter say that you’re going to fight, I’m going to have your back 110 percent. But I can’t live with myself without telling you how I truly feel. This isn’t about anything other than your safety and your legacy, in my opinion,’” he continued.
“So we agreed upon what we were going to do was, we were going to come to California fight week, [and] we were going to meet with the doctor out here in LA The moment we landed, we went right to his office and basically waited outside and he came out and I could tell by his face, I’m like, ‘Oh, we’re fighting.’ Once we knew that, I didn’t bring his knee up once. I didn’t say anything about it. I didn’t want to talk about it anymore because that, as far as I was concerned, was behind us. We’re going to fight with what we’ve got.
Competing with serious injuries and severely damaged ligaments is not uncommon in MMA. Many fighters enter the cage hurt but few do so as a UFC champion looking to cash in on their success with a lucrative new contract with the promotion, or with another fight organization in the sport.
The 35-year-old rolled the dice in a major way inside the Honda Center in Anaheim, Calif., however, he left with his belt in tow and his value at an all-new high. Ngannou is currently in the “champions clause” part of his UFC deal and has stated he is willing to sit out the rest of the year if he and the promotion can’t come to terms on a new pact.
Ngannou is expected to have surgery on his knee, but a timetable for his return is not yet known.
