Francis Ngannou Defeats Renan Ferreira with Impressive First-Round Stoppage
PFL held their Battle of the Giants event in Saudi Arabia, Headlining the event was a super fight between PFL’s 2023 Heavyweight Renan Ferreira and former UFC Heavyweight Champion Francis Ngannou. Since Francis was coming off a knockout loss to Anthony Joshua, there was doubt if Francis would be able to come back as his former dominant self after his loss. What we did see was everyone who doubted was dead wrong, me included.
The fight started with both trading impactful leg kicks, it was clear that both Ngannou and Ferreira were being cautious of the potential power shot. After being able to press Ferreira near the cage Francis threw a faint cross. As Renan slipped the feint, Ngannou shot a perfect takedown. Right away Ngannou tries to get a better position to land ground and pound, however, Renan did a good job holding Ngannou in place limiting the power of Ngannou. The turning point is when Ferreira tried to put Francis in a triangle choke, Ferreira didn’t have the proper space to really create that angle to complete the choke. Francis gets out of the danger zone and takes Ferreira’s back, right away Ferreira covers up knowing that Francis was going to start going for ground and pound. As Francis started throwing punches that got through the guard of Ferreira, Ferreira started showing signs that he was stuck. Until the perfect punches landed and flattened Renan out, after one more huge punch for good measure the referee saw enough and stopped the fight.
After Ngannou won his fight against Renan, he became emotional thinking about his late son Kobe. Francis' team cried as well, showing that they must have seen the emotions going into this fight. With Francis now being the PFL heavyweight Champion and Former UFC Heavyweight champion he’ll keep his name as “The baddest man on the planet”, with that name there must be more Heavyweights looking to get a win over him. Russian Heavyweight Denis Goltsov has been undefeated in his last three fights in PFL 2024 season and is scheduled to fight another undefeated Heavyweight in 2024 Oleg Popov, Whoever wins that fight would most likely to go on and fight Francis Ngannou in 2025 if Francis doesn’t choose to go back to boxing.
