Midnight Mania! Ngannou Dethroned As Power Punch King

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Welcome to Midnight Mania!

Francis Ngannou hits as hard as a Ford Escort.

Nobody knows precisely what that means, but back when “The Predator” was on good terms with UFC, the promotion loved to advertise his fearsome punching prowess. The UFC Performance Institute (PI) has a machine designed to absorb impact and register just how much force went into the blow, and for many years, Ngannou has ruled as the record-holder and de facto power punching king since 2017.

No longer.

On a recent episode of the JRE MMA Show, UFC color commentator Joe Rogan sat down with top-ranked Welterweight contender Sean Brady. The submission ace hasn’t set any punching records that we know about, but according to the duo, Francis Ngannou’s record has been upset by rising Middleweight talent Joe Pyfer.

“That motherf—ker hits so hard,” Rogan said about Pyfer. “We should tell everybody that he broke Francis Ngannou’s record on that punch machine.”

“They weren’t trying to give it [the record] to him,” Brady responded.

Rogan continued, “They didn’t want to register it, and I don’t understand why. Why didn’t they want to give it to him?”

“I don’t know,” Brady answered. “The guy was saying something was weird with the machine … He [Pyfer] did it like three times! Three times in a row.”

“Oh, so the guy didn’t want to believe it?” Rogan concluded in laughter.

Let’s get the machine calibrated and get “Bodybagz” back in front of it! Pyfer may not have quite the resume of Ngannou, but the 27-year-old talent has proven the power in his hands in the cage, having stopped eight of his 12 wins via knockout. He’s next scheduled for his first main event slot opposite Jack Hermansson in February from the UFC Apex in Las Vegas, Nevada.

As for Ngannou, he’s still in the process of checking how hard he can hit in laced up gloves. He’s expected to score a $20 million paycheck in March when he squares off with Anthony Joshua in Saudi Arabia. Perhaps that payday will ease the pain of a lost (perhaps unofficially) record?

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