Stipe Miocic’s all-but-officially-confirmed title defense against Francis Ngannou is not only a great way to start of 2018, it’s a great opportunity for the UFC to show that it actually knows how to promote big fights.
They now have to prove their worth because Miocic and Ngannou have legitimately interesting backstories to match their brutal knockout power. However, neither Titan is an over-the-top trash talker, which means that the UFC and their still-new owners, mega Hollywood conglomerate WME-IMG, have to convince the public that this is a fight worth caring about.
WME-IMG and UFC must start with the champion, Miocic, who, when he’s not knocking dudes out, is a firefighter from Cleveland. The 34-year-old is a part-timer, however, which means that he has to do menial chores like cleaning the firehouse bathroom.
“He doesn’t complain,” Kenneth Papesh, chief of the Valley View fire station where Miocic works, told MMAJunkie. “And to be fair, there is not a lot he can do about it. It’s the job.”
Miocic approaches his UFC career in the same way. Miocic walks to the Octagon and knocks dudes out, that’s it. His last four fights, which include three title bouts, were all won by first round KO/TKO’s and all earned Miocic either “Performance of the Night” or “Fight of the Night” bonuses. Miocic, with a win over Ngannou, will also put himself in the conversation for the greatest heavyweight of all time because he will have defended the belt three times in a row, which would be a record.
“Blue-collar Rust Belt warrior with record-breaking hands of stone” is the kind of character that a talent agency like WME-IMG should be able to sell. Yet they haven’t been able to sink their claws into Miocic because the heavyweight champion has been in the midst of renegotiating his contract. With the news that the Ngannou fight is all but official, however, it’s finally time for the agency’s promotional abilities to kick into gear.
Miocic, as a semi-blank slate, should be ideal when compared to the old school UFC. Before getting purchased for $4 billion, the UFC only knew how to sell two things. First, there were the WWE-style characters like Conor McGregor, Chuck Lidell, and Tito Ortiz. Then there were the truly great silent types like George St-Pirre, Matt Hughes, and Anderson Silva. The UFC never knew what to do with guys like Miocic, who is somewhere in between and not easily defined by narrative. WME-IMG, on the other hand, has had success promoting top tennis talents, like the Williams sisters, Maria Sharapova and Rafael Nadal. Miocic is their first chance to do the same thing with a UFC fighter.
While Miocic’s situation clearly isn’t the UFC’s promotional bread-and-butter, he at least has a worthy foil in Ngannou. Unlike Junior dos Santos and Alistair Overeem, Miocic’s last two opponents, Ngannou, at 31, is just entering his prime and is an athletic match for the the deceptively light-footed champion.
Ngannou also has an almost unbelievable rags-to-riches biography to match Miocic’s middle America wholesomeness. Born in Cameroon, Ngannou grew up extremely poor and started working in his home town’s sand mine at the age of 12, according to Bleacher Report.
The always large and strong man-child though had gigantic dreams even as he shoveled sand into trucks. Ngannou wanted to follow in the footsteps of his hero, Mike Tyson, so, at the age of 22, he moved to France to find a boxing trainer. Literally walking from gym to gym in the streets of Paris, the homeless youth eventually found a boxing gym that would train him and then was guided into MMA. The 6-foot-4, 225-pound Ngannou hasn’t looked back and he’s now the most promising heavyweight prospect to enter the UFC since Brock Lesnar.
The Cameroonian’s story is the stuff movies are made of and his performance’s inside the Octagon are a dream for fans and a nightmare for his opponents. Ngannou has gotten in the habit of carving a lightning bolt in his hair such that he looks like a cross between an NFL linebacker and Thor. Tall with freakishly long arms, he bounces up and down like he’s a lightweight and hits so hard that a single punch snatches the consciousness right out of the UFC’s biggest fighters.
UFC president Dana White knows what he has in Ngannou.
“The guy, first of all, when you look at him, he looks like the heavyweight champion of the world,” White said during his UFC 218 post-fight press conference. “I mean, he looks like the heavyweight champion of something. The guy is a monster.”
A monster versus an Ohio fireman is an undeniably awesome fight. Now it’s up to the UFC to tell the world all about it.