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Nigeria’s Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) welterweight champion, Kamaru Usman has revealed he felt a lot of satisfaction being in the corner of Cameroon’s Francis Ngannou for the heavyweight’s latest title defence.
With Kamaru close to his side, Ngannou reenacted his frightening punching power, used effective takedowns and utilised superior grappling to defeat Gane in their battle for the undisputed heavyweight title.
Megasportsarena.com reports that it happened at The Octagon on Saturday, as Ngannou put his belt on the line in the UFC 270 main event against Ciryl Gane.
That marked a repeat of an earlier occasion when Usman was also in the corner with Ngannou ‘The Predator’ (16-3 MMA, 11-2 UFC) for his title-winning knockout of Stipe Miocic in March.
‘The Nigerian Nightmare’ opted to be in the same spot for Saturday’s heavyweight unification bout with Gane (10-0 MMA, 7-0 UFC), stating how delighted he was seeing Ngannou going into UFC 270 mentally and physically stable.
The Texas-based Nigerian fighter (20-1 MMA, 15-0 UFC), who was recently ranked number two in the latest USA TODAY Sports/MMA Junkie pound-for-pound rankings, said his primary goal on fight night was to bring good energy in for Ngannou.
The fight between Ngannou and Gane was the main event of UFC 270 at Honda Center, ahead of which Usman stopped short making an official prediction, but confessed that it would always ultimately come down to who executes the best on fight night.
Usman told MMA Junkie: “I’m seeing a stone-cold killer. This is how Francis is every fight. It’s something very, very rare when you have a guy this big.
“Whenever Francis Ngannou walks into a room, everyone knows Francis Ngannou is in the room. I see him he’s calm and he’s ready to step in there.”
Ngannou won by scores of 48-47 twice and 49-46 to retain his belt from the main event of UFC 270 at Honda Center on Saturday.
The fight was billed as a battle of the sport’s best big men, both of whom were big punchers. UFC president, Dana White said Ngannou was the most frightening puncher in mixed martial arts history and that Gane was the best heavyweight striker in the promotion’s history.
Gane had his way for the most part in the first two rounds, staying on the outside as predicted and using his athleticism to defuse Ngannou’s power, but the Cameroonian took his foe down three times in the third and it changed the fight completely.
Ngannou, who got top control and used it to his advantage, swept the final three rounds on all three judges’ cards and didn’t land one massive power shot, even as he wore knee sleeves and revealed after that he had torn his ACL completely three weeks ago.
However, he went on with the fight and did something few, if any, outside of his team could have imagined he’d do. It was the first win by decision of his career, as he improved to 17-3.
Ngannou posited: “I couldn’t see myself retreating from this fight, because I’m a champion. People forget about me, but I’m a champion.”
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