Former NFL star Shannon Sharpe was trying to teach Francis Ngannou a thing or two about mixed martial arts (MMA), because who better to school a former Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) heavyweight champion than a retired football player with his own YouTube show?
“The one thing about MMA, you can’t be one-dimensional,” Sharpe said (with a certain degree of authority). “Ronda Rousey was one-dimensional. Conor McGregor is one-dimensional. He just throws punches.”
Sounds like something a “novice rat bag” might say.
“He has a good ground game, too,” Ngannou countered. “There is always somebody who has a better ground game than somebody, and when they say you have a decent ground game, it’s not the best in the game. It’s a sport with multiple disciplines. Most of the time, the champion is not great at one thing … you just need to be good at a lot.”
I guess Alex Pereira didn’t get the memo.
Sharpe was prodding Ngannou about his next fight, which could come against former boxing champion Deontay Wilder in a mixed-rules bout under the PFL banner. That’s how the topic of discussion turned to required dimensions in combat sports.
And as we learned at UFC 270, Ngannou has most (if not all) of them.