Francis Ngannou entered the Octagon for the main event of Saturday's UFC 260 event already considered the most feared striker in the sport. By the end of the night, he turned in a masterpiece, knocking out Stipe Miocic with a brutal series of strikes that left Miocic unconscious and Ngannou as UFC heavyweight champion.
The championship victory allowed Ngannou to close a chapter of his career, having lost a title fight with Miocic in 2018, a loss that he said made him a better fighter. He showed that growth in the Octagon three years later, easily avoiding the takedowns of Miocic to set up his crushing final strikes. It also may give Ngannou some peace in regards to his rough upbringing as a child. He claimed in a pre-fight interview with ESPN that winning the belt was something he felt he needed to fill a hole left in him through those struggles in Cameroon.
"I don't find it fun to talk about [my childhood]," Ngannou said. "It's not happy. For me, it's sad. I always admire people when I sit around and see people, friends or somebody else, talking about their childhood; their friends when they were kids, all the things they were doing, their cartoons, kind of like the culture. I feel like those are the missing parts of my life, and no matter what I do, I can't really fill it up. That's why in some way I'm still trying to deal with that childhood. Winning a UFC belt for me, would be my own way to answer that, would be my own way to show those people that, well, after all, I wasn't bad."
While the knockout was vicious in motion, sometimes a picture can capture a moment in ways a video can not. With that, let us take a look at some of the final moments of a fight that fulfilled Ngannou's dream.
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Ngannou said after that he can't wait to get home and celebrate with all of the people that believed he would get the job done on Saturday and become the third champion from Africa in UFC.
"Today, this is not just for me. This is for all of us. For people that put their hand on the dirt and believed in this, people from around the world, for my fans, for everyone who believed it, because that's very important," Ngannou said. "Those people give you the strength when you need it, extra motivation when you're tired and maybe just want to skip on training or something. You think about that and that gives you motivation to keep going forward."
