Never has a kimura against a journeyman on a fight card no one cared about ever meant so much.
A week ago in Albany at UFC Fight Night 102, Francis Ngannou took on Anthony Hamilton in a Fight Pass co-main event that not many fans were anticipating. It was a chance for the Cameroon-born Parisian to get some rounds in and maybe show people what he could do in a low-pressure setting after showing up for work in a big way on FOX in his last bout.
Pressed against the cage with the crafty Hamilton weighing heavily on him, Ngannou snaked his arm over his man’s shoulder and locked up a kimura grip—a routine, if fruitless, defensive position adopted by more than one befuddled combatant stuck in that spot and out of ideas.
It was what happened next that showed a wholly unforeseen wrinkle.
Ngannou cranked on Hamilton’s arm and found a little give, then cranked further and sent Hamilton toppling to the mat. Ngannou held on, maintained top position and proceeded to finish the submission with baffling ease considering that Hamilton had 20 fights worth of experience going in and tipped the scales at comfortably over 250-pounds for their battle.
It was the type of uniquely bewildering occurrence that makes one sit up and take notice. All of a sudden, Ngannou wasn’t just some guy slugging it out with the giant humans of heavyweight to fill out undercards for stars with bigger names and bigger paychecks. All of a sudden, he was an attraction in and of himself.
The UFC saw it the same way, hastily booking Ngannou into a bout with Andrei Arlovski for later next month. It’s an action very much representative of the attitude that they have the first serious prospect at heavyweight that they’ve had this decade and they need to find out just how fast they can push him into contendership.
Not since Stipe Miocic was on the come-up has there been such evidence that a heavyweight athlete may be future championship material. Miocic, now the champion of the weight class, was an undercover legend before he ever made the UFC and used the early part of the 2010s to grow a legacy before taking the belt earlier this year.
Similarly, he was mashing and smashing veterans at an alarming rate, scoring savage finishes or displaying unique feats of athleticism not seen outside of the very best the division had to offer at that time.
Interestingly, once he joined their ranks and began fighting names like Junior dos Santos, Mark Hunt, Arlovski and Fabricio Werdum, he began to show that he’d rounded out his game and was living up to the hype. Also interestingly, the major uptick in his development happened right around the same age Ngannou is now.
It’s no secret that heavyweight mixed martial artists peak much later than those in lighter weight classes. Skills seems to come together in the mid-30s for most guys, and genuine championship-level abilities begin to reveal themselves even later in some instances. It seems as though Ngannou is at the base of the rollercoaster and moving upwards, preparing for the wild loops and twists that will comprise his career trajectory over the next several years.
The Arlovski booking is the first such twist.
Arlovski is the perfect opponent right now, a former champion who was one Miocic punch away from challenging for a title himself earlier this year. He was subsequently stopped by Alistair Overeem and Josh Barnett and now finds himself in the back half of the top 10, still as wily and dangerous as ever thanks to a veritable lifetime of wrecking shop against the best big men in the sport.
Yet his chin can be touched, and when it is, it has a history of betraying him, which is the exact characteristic that UFC matchmakers will look to see if Ngannou can exploit. If he can, with his power it’s almost a certainty that he’ll put Arlovski to rest and seek a new, bigger challenge.
It’s not out of the realm of possibility that, given the dearth of talent at the top of the class, a year from now we could be talking about him as a title contender. Maybe even already a champion.
That’s the path for Ngannou as the first true heavyweight prospect of the decade. He’s still a little raw, and he needs some seasoning, but with the right opponents and the right training, the division is open for him to barnstorm.
Based on what he’s shown so far, it would be foolish to dismiss it.
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