Back at UFC 220 in January of 2018, Francis Ngannou was taking on Stipe Miocic for the heavyweight title. Ngannou was knocking everyone out and many expected him to do the same to Miocic. Yet, that is far from what happened as the heavyweight champ wrestled Ngannou and dominated him for five rounds.
Since then, Ngannou went on to lose to Derrick Lewis in a lackluster fight but has since gone on a roll and a three-fight winning streak. Looking back on the loss, Ngannou said he needed that for his career.
“Nobody wants to lose, but I think at some point I needed a fight like that,” Francis Ngannou said when speaking to MMA Fighting. “Sooner or later, I would have faced something like that. Because my rise was very fast, very quick, and I didn’t have time to understand a lot of things.”
Francis Ngannou says without that fight he would have never made changes to his style, and what he needed to do to become a champion. So, he suspects the next time he fights for the title again, the outcome will be different.
“What happened was even though at that point [where] I was ultimately a title contender, I still felt like I didn’t understand many things,” Ngannou said. “There were many things in the sport that I didn’t know.
“The fight against Stipe allowed me to understand many of those things. It allowed me to understand how you work and obviously, eventually when it happens again, it’s going to be different.”
