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Francis Ngannou Returns to MMA and PFL: A Comeback Story
SportsGrid
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10/18/2024
Category
🥇
Sports
Transcript
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00:00
And I want to begin with Nagano.
00:07
He's back in the octagon where many believe he belongs, MMA.
00:14
That's what he's great at.
00:15
He went and boxed and he certainly had his problems there.
00:21
Yeah, he did, Scott.
00:22
I mean, obviously that first one, he had that, you know, decision loss to Tyson Fury,
00:26
which people kind of got caught off guard.
00:28
Some of them thought he might even won it and that Fury kind of got given that one.
00:31
So he got a little confidence, said, okay, well, now I'm going to go into Anthony Joshua,
00:34
and then got dropped in the second round.
00:36
So it's been, I think, three years since we saw him fight Sheryl Gaunt in his last MMA fight,
00:40
you know, winning that UFC title.
00:41
Now he's come back.
00:43
You know, he had those two fights of boxing, which he took time to train for, had some time off too,
00:47
because, you know, unfortunately lost his 15-month-old son.
00:50
You know, you love the name after Kobe, his son that was, took him to the hospital twice,
00:54
once in Cameroon, once in Saudi Arabia, had some malform on the brain that they didn't diagnose
00:59
and unfortunately ended up dying earlier this year right after that Joshua fight.
01:03
So he thought about quitting.
01:05
He thought about hanging it up, but he decided that he didn't want that to be the reason he stopped.
01:09
And he's coming back here.
01:10
This is his first fight in MMA, first fight for the PFL off that mega contract he signed
01:15
against Ferrer, their champion.
01:17
This guy who, you know, people remember him a couple of years ago when he lost to Verdum.
01:20
Well, he actually got the win against Verdum, but it was returned to a no contest
01:23
because the guy topped out and the ref didn't see it and let it go.
01:27
And then later on, I ended up knocking out Verdum, but now he's 13-3, won his last four.
01:31
He is, you know, the champion of the PFL and a guy who's going to come in here in his first fight
01:36
and see if he can take that belt and, you know, get back to his ways as the Predator.
01:41
I mean, honestly, now I'll give you this.
01:44
You talk about Ferrer, how he won, if he won at all, and then he's been winning ever since,
01:52
but who is he fighting?
01:53
Now he's fighting this monster, and I know nothing,
01:57
but I do know that that guy's going to kill him.
02:01
That's what's going to happen.
02:02
He's definitely shade that way.
02:04
I mean, minus 325 for Nagano.
02:06
His last fight was against Bader.
02:07
They had that, you know, like the Bellator PFL champions versus each other
02:10
after the two companies merged, but obviously we know Ryan Bader's really a light heavyweight
02:14
that's just messing around in heavyweight, you know,
02:16
because he didn't want to cut weight the last couple of years.
02:18
So, this guy's 6'8", huge.
02:20
One of the, you know, guys, bigger guys that Nagano's ever going to fight,
02:23
but I'm with you.
02:24
He has not fought that level of competition.
02:26
You know, I know some people, some experts are picking him to get the upset.
02:29
I'm not doing it.
02:30
I like Nagano.
02:31
That's too rich for my blood, though.
02:32
So, I'm going to try over one and a half rounds of plus 172
02:35
because we saw him against God, used that grappling that we never saw before
02:39
and just dominated for five rounds with that.
02:41
I think, you know, his first fight back in a couple of years, we used that.
02:45
We see him take him to the ground a little bit, avoid those big shots.
02:48
I also think, for me, that it's going to end, a lot of things get him by KO.
02:53
If you want to splash it for points, you can.
02:55
I'm going to say that it ends in either two or three.
02:57
These are two heavyweights, two guys that like to go for the finish.
03:00
I think it ends in two or three plus 260.
03:02
And, you know, you can hit the plus 172 on the over one and a half
03:05
and take all that edge or take a little extra juice
03:07
and say it ends in those middle rounds there.
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