Highlights! Watch Ngannou steamroll Miocic RIGHT HERE.
Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) sent reigning heavyweight kingpin Stipe Miocic into battle against 265-pound knockout artist Francis Ngannou in the UFC 260 pay-per-view (PPV) main event, which took place last Sat. night (March 27, 2021) inside APEX in Las Vegas, Nevada, a rematch from their UFC 220 headliner which Miocic won by unanimous decision.
History would not repeat itself.
Ngannou summarily destroyed Miocic with a violent second-round knockout, capturing the heavyweight title and positioning himself for a super-sized showdown against former light heavyweight champion Jon Jones. “Bones” vacated his strap in summer 2020 to make his oft-teased jump to the 265-pound weight class, where “The Predator” awaits.
“Show me the money,” Jones wrote on Twitter. “I didn’t gain all this weight for no reason.”
Remember, Jones and Ngannou tried to finagle a fight once before but the promotion was unwilling to compensate either combatant. Now that Ngannou has the heavyweight title and “Bones” is no longer beholden to the thirsty challengers at 205 pounds, matchmakers can build a fight that makes sense on paper and more importantly, justifies its price tag.
That said, Jones may also be trying to price himself out of the fight.
“There’s a lot of different ways to turn down a fight,” UFC President Dana White said when negotiating with this fickle fighter. “Negotiating yourself out of one is one of the ways you can do it.”
It’s a tried-and-true tactic, according to this reigning champion.
Working in Jones favor is the fact that he’s been complaining about pay for several years and it was the primary reason he surrendered the light heavyweight crown. It’s hard to say what number “Bones” has in mind but based on what we saw Ngannou do to Miocic, I would expect his asking price to reflect the risk involved.
Let’s start the bidding at … $30 million?!?
For much more on the UFC 260 event, including results, recaps, highlights, reactions and more, head over to our comprehensive “Miocic vs. Ngannou” news archive right here.