uscbucsfan wrote: ↑Wed Mar 02, 2022 11:23 am
Primeminister wrote: ↑Tue Mar 01, 2022 1:57 am
Couldn’t disagree more.
How? It seems like a pretty universal review of the fight.
Many chalk it up to Ngannou being injured before the fight and why he was so sloppy and lacked power in his punches. Also believe that's why he lacked cardio.
Ngannou couldnt' do anything on the ground, he just got Gane down and laid there. He was too tired to throw punches and almost got a leg lock if not for just overall poor position and a lack of experience by Gane.
I can't see why anyone would be impressed by the fight. Ngannou absolutely was better than anyone would have believed at taking Gane to the ground and positioning, but Gane also looked like a beginner.
It was a sloppy fight.
It’s Ngannou’s best fight because we have seen him use ungodly power to end fights. In this particular fight he was facing a more tactical fighter in Gane who was never going to allow Ngannou’s power to become a factor. Gane won the first 2 rounds by fighting the patient fight which forced Ngannou to choose a more tactical approach to victory. That first slam (3rd round I think) was a statement because no one in the arena expected Nganñou to go for the take down much less land an emphatic one.
I also disagree that Ngannou lacked cardio any more than in any other fight. Anyone who says that has never watched Ngannou fight beyond the third round. His cardio in this one was miles better than his other 5 rounders. We have seen him gassed and this was not it.
Now the injury surely played into his inability to attack on the feet as effectively as he normally does. This is what makes the takedowns even more impressive imo. Gane is not an easy man to take down, yet Ngannou did it over and over again. Gane played a great defensive game on the bottom which stalled out Ngannou’s top game. Knowing about the injury makes this make even more sense, but watching live I remember crediting Gane with making it very difficult to GnP him due to positioning.
Frankly it’s insane that Ngannou has come this far this fact with his ground game. What we saw in the first Stipe fight to the Gabe fight is entire galaxies different. I’m fairly sure a few of us here have trained in some capacity so you know that most people don’t improve their BJJ/MMA ground game that quickly. Especially when you add in the takedown aspect. I expect Ngannou’s next fight to show improved submission ability and probably the most terrifying GNP of all time. Imagine that mountain of a man in full mount raining down shots….it would be murder.