The big boys are back for UFC 260.
Current heavyweight champion, Stipe Miocic will look to complete a second consecutive title defense this March, as he takes on Francis Ngannou.
Miocic has been on a steady incline, after taking the title from Daniel Cormier when DC was the top pound-for-pound fighter of the UFC.
This won’t be the first time these two have met in the Octagon, previously fighting at UFC 220 in January 2018, where Miocic took the win via unanimous decision. At the time, the win set the record for the most consecutive heavyweight defences in UFC history at three. He would eventually go on to lose the title to Cormier, and then regaining it in a rematch in August 2019.
Ngannou, now the No. 1 heavyweight contender, is hoping to rewrite history, although the first bout was a loss on the books, it was a valuable learning experience for Ngannou.
“I had two different feelings from that fight,” Ngannou told Joe Rogan on the Joe Rogan Experience podcast. “First, obviously I was very upset and disappointed that I didn’t win the fight. As everyone who is fighting for the title, you want to go out there victorious. But to be honest, I always look in that fight since the fight day, just after the fight, I look at it and now I’m like, ‘This is good.’ I learned too much in that fight because even though I was on the level, fighting for the world title, I still have some missing parts in my game and in my experience.
“I remember I was asking myself, questioning myself like, ‘Okay, how does it look like to go into three rounds?’ Basically I was going into a potential five rounds and I’ve never been in three rounds. How did it look like, how is it to prepare for this kind of fight? I had a fight like six weeks earlier so I was having a lot of questions. Then after that fight I was like, ‘Okay, I get it.’”
In the years to follow the loss against Miocic, Ngannou has gone on a tear, knocking out four opponents in a combined 2 minutes and 47 seconds, sitting as the No. 1 contender in the heavyweight division. If there was ever going to be a time for Ngannou to take the title, a patient build up in a new Covid-19 world meant a delay in the timeline.
I knew it was going to happen,” Ngannou concluded. “It was frustrating, the waiting time, all those things uncertain, but I knew it was going to happen. Guess what, there’s only one thing that’s gong to make it happen. Get your ass in the gym, work, get out there and win the fight, get a title shot. At some point, it’s going to happen.”
A late withdrawal from the card, Aussie champ, Alexander Volkanovski will no longer defend his champ featherweight status due to a positive COVID-19 test after travelling from Australia to the US.
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MAIN CARD
Heavyweight Title Bout
Stipe Miocic vs Francis Ngannou
UNDER CARD
Welterweight Bout
Tyron Woodley vs Vicente Luque
Bantamweight Bout
Sean O’Malley vs Thomas Almeida