The best and worst from UFC on ESPN: Ngannou vs. Dos Santos
I wasn’t expecting too much from last night’s UFC on ESPN card if I’m honest; I was excited about the main event between Francis Ngannou and Junior Dos Santos, but that was about it. In execution though, I’ve got no qualms in saying that the show turned out to be one of the best cards of 2019 thus far.
We were treated to 12 fights and just 4 of those went the distance, with the majority of the rest being finished in brutal fashion. And at the end of the day, that’s what we all watch the UFC for, right? Sure, there were a couple of things that weren’t perfect, but when I’m stretching to find the ‘bad’ parts of the card – Vinc Pichel vs. Roosevelt Roberts was a bit forgettable but wasn’t bad per se – you know it’s a solid show.
Here are the best and worst moments from UFC on ESPN: Ngannou vs. Dos Santos.
#1 Best: Ngannou’s face-melting power nets him a likely title shot
We all knew that the likelihood of Francis Ngannou vs. Junior Dos Santos going the 25-minute distance was pretty low, but for the fight to finish in just under a minute was totally spectacular. Essentially, Junior fouled up pretty badly – swinging a wild overhand right and leaving himself open to the counter – and Ngannou indeed countered, hitting him with some swift and brutal punches that sent him down and finished the fight early.
It wasn’t the most brutal knockout of Ngannou’s career – his KO of Alistair Overeem still owns that title – but it was definitely impressive and should be enough to get him a title shot against the winner of the upcoming Daniel Cormier/Stipe Miocic fight. I’m sure I speak for most of the MMA fanbase too when I say I hope it’s Cormier; nothing against Stipe but we’ve already seen him face Ngannou and Cormier vs. ‘The Predator’ sounds fantastic.
How would such a fight go? In all honesty, I don’t know, as it’s hard to tell from three super-quick KO’s whether Ngannou has closed the holes in his game that were so visible in that fight with Miocic in January 2018. But he’s got the face-melting power to take out anyone in the UFC right now so you could never count him out.
In a tangent, it was also nice to see Ngannou’s fellow African fighter Dalcha Lungiambula pick up a UFC debut win on the prelims; more worldwide talent for the UFC to choose from means more great fights and to date, Africa hasn’t really produced many great fighters. Hopefully, that’s changing.