Remember the days when Dana White would mention how badass it was that 1 #1 Francis Ngannou could punch as hard a a Ford Fiesta? Man how times have changed from their relationship to Francis becoming an honorary citizen of Dagestan with his wrestling by trippling his previous take down record against #2 Ciryl Gane. The Juxtaposition that arguably one of the more boring fights of Francis’ career is the one that would end up having the most stipulation in his pay is funny when you think about it. UFC 270 almost came out with more questions than answer but in a good way, especially when we consider the early front runner for fight of the year that was #2 Brandon Moreno vs. #1 Deiveson Figueiredo.
So let’s talk the two giants in the room first. The main event was a little bit what the community expected up until the beginning of the the third round. Up until that point a tired looking Ngannou was breathing heavy out of his mouth with two knee braces that implied some sort of injury (later after the fight he mentioned that he had torn his ACL and MCL in his knee) when things took a turn for the unexpected in the third. Cyril Gane was up two rounds to zip on my score card and seemed like he was just getting started the gameplan we all thought would happen. Francis would gas, Ciryl would snipe him from distance.
And just like that Francis starts doing picture perfect double legs and starts slamming Ciryl Gane and then held him there and the real weakness was exploited when he was looking like a fish out of water struggling to get Francis off of him. This continued for the next three rounds up until Ciryl made a last ditch (some would say poor choice) effort in trying to get Francis in a leg lock in the last round with a minute left.
The result, Francis Ngannou, and still.
So let’s talk about the tea with with Francis and Dana. Anyone else notice how Dana was not the one that that wrapped the Championship belt around Ngannou’s waist? Not only that, but the salty prick didn’t even show to the post fight conference. Which was no surprise since he would’ve been eating his words in front of the media all night. Francis bet agaisnt the house and won, where seemingly everyone that has done so has ended up on the wrong side of things.
And now he should get paid, and from what the CSAC disclosed for payout it should be more, a lot more. Francis Ngannou, Heavyweight Champion of the world for the premiere MMA promotion was only netting 600k (disclosed, PPV payouts won’t be out until a couple of weeks) after his first title defense. And yeah I say only. Because if you take into account that the loser of the trilogy between Tyson Fury and Devonte Wilder got 20 million. Shit we can talk about Jake Paul the boxer which reportedly made 20 million from just his payouts. Which is about 10x more than the entire card payout COMBINED. And now the all the chips on his corner and the pending knee injury that is sure to take upwards of 7 months to heal after surgery and physical therapy. Francis now can not only wait out the rest of his contract agreement which got extended due to his championship clause in his agreement, but do so without being put into another bout until he gets proper treatment. This I believe would be the second biggest moment in fighter pay history since Conor was able to change the pay landscape back when he became double champ back in ‘16.
For my money I still don’t know why Dana would get upset, yeah you didn’t get your way by trying to not pay Francis, but leads to you possibly promoting for a Jon Jones fight down the line or better yet a fight between Francis and Tyson Fury. When you have the opportunities to make the bags of money in these super fights why would a promoter be mad about that? Fuck if I will ever know.
And as for Ciryl Gane, his composure after defeat is the reason why I believe he will still be champ one day. He conceded defeat and said that he wishes to fight against Francis someday in the future but that he has to go back and figure things out. That’s truly all you can ask for from a fighter after a defeat. With three short years in the game and already coming off a title fight loss that went all the way with Francis Ngannou, the guy who pancaked Stipe Miocic, as far as I am concerned Bon Gamin’ has nothing to hang his head about.
Now we move on from the big boys to the smallest men, in Deiveson Figueiredo and Brandon Moreno providing us with the first fight of the year contender with a amazing five round battle that ended up going to Deiveson Figueiredo. Now being a Mexican rooting for Brandon was a prerequisite in order to be able to continue to say that I am Mexican, but his demeanor in the first round left a bit of a bitter taste in my mouth. And by that it was the way he was almost playing around with Figgy.
Especially with his corner being so sure that he won the second round which was razor close and also had Figgy out striking him. But with the tale of the tape at the end you Brandon Moreno out striking Deiveson by just 19 and also being on the receiving end of three knockdowns. Close fight as any and they were both trading rounds so there was no surprise that Figgy won, maybe not the wanted result but that was closeeeeeeeee. And no it wasn’t a robbery, you can’t say close fight yet have a clear winner. And who knows what judges see sometimes, but the California State Athletic Commission (CSAC for short) runs a tight ship and is also home to so many combat sports I think they are the standard in terms of judges.
Now the only thing to decide is when the next fight between these two titans takes place. Because for as much as I loathe rematches its hard not to believe that these two were just made to go to war with each other. As for Deiveson he wants the next fight to take place in Mexico. But with the recent announcement that Glover Teixeira And Jiří Procházka are set for May 7th, it would be hard not to want that match in Brazil as a co-main even though I believe they are main event worthy, especially if it goes down in Mexico.
With that being said I hope the tetralogy between the two gets scheduled as soon as possible. Because anyone that doesn’t want to see more of that is just simply wrong.
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As always invest in you mental health,
And Fuck you Jon Jones.
Per official No Name MMA Show Rankings