Beating Francis Ngannou happens on the feet, not wrestling

A controversial look at how to approach the heavy hitting MMA king.

The best path to victory against Francis Ngannou is on the feet, not through the wrestling. Long time followers of “The Predator” may cringe at the thought of standing in front of the heaviest hitter MMA has ever seen. But today I will look to convince you with diagrams and information to back this up rather than the traditional approach of wrestling.

So where do we begin?

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Why not the clinch?

Everyone remembers the infamous first fight with Stipe Miocic at UFC 220 in 2018. It seemed that Francis Ngannou was destined for the UFC heavyweight title that night. Miocic had other plans and racked up a mind numbing 15 minutes of control time. Everything came crashing down.

Ever since that fight, the idea has been to wrestle Ngannou. But Ngannou worked on that aspect of his game as well and has become formidable. Let’s observe…

Let’s fast forward to his last MMA fight (more on boxing in a minute). At UFC 270, Ciryl Gane attempted to press Ngannou to the fence. The Xtreme Couture fighter made life difficult there for Gane. (1) With Gane pressing into him, Ngannou grabs the overhook with his left hand and begins to frame Gane’s head, controlling head position. (2) As he pushed Gane’s head down with his forearm, Ngannou threatens with the knee which forces Gane to come back up. As he does, (3) Ngannou pushes on the head of Gane and allows him to exit the clinch.

With the recent insistence on wrestling and leaning on Ngannou in hopes of getting him to the ground has helped Francis Ngannou develop a devastating clinch game where he’s the most lethal.

Now to boxing…

Despite losing the fight, Ngannou’s boxing match with Tyson Fury was his magnum opus when it comes to fighting in the clinch.

Tyson Fury looooves to clinch. It’s how he neutered Deontay Wilder in the two’s rematch and became champion again. Ngannou was having none of it. (1) As Fury looked to clinch, Ngannou made sure to get his arms in position, framing off of Fury (similar to Gane earlier) with both of his forearms. (2) As Fury struggled to lock up Ngannou, he would angle his hips out, and (3) switch his left hand to the opposite side of Fury’s head. This frees his right hand up to (4) fire in the uppercut while framing off with his left hand. Lethal.

In another example, we have (1) Francis Ngannou on the offensive and (2) Tyson Fury looks to clinch. Ngannou (3) separates his hips and keeps the forearms framed on Fury’s collar. Instead of angling his hips out, Ngannou decides to (4) hammer home an uppercut to the body, (5) again to the body, and then up top as he pulls the head down.

This is a common theme across MMA as opposed to boxing due to the clinch rules. If an opponent is faster than you, a great idea is to grab ahold of them. In MMA, grabbing a half collar tie and hammer home an uppercut. They can’t move as easily if they’re restrained.

One of my favorite of this approach was Rob Font laying out Adrian Yanez. (1) Getting wild, Yanez was pressuring Font insanely. (2) Font threw out the jab and (3) grabs the back of Yanez’ head. Notice the right uppercut coming from Font’s back pocket. It (4) lands home and Yanez hits the deck.

Ngannou doesn’t use this approach unless he’s facing a faster opponent, like Ciryl Gane. He consistently looked for the tie but Gane, as flawed as he was, made sure to stay out of the clinch with the stronger Ngannou.