Francis Ngannou reveals he suffered brutal knee injury before UFC 270 win over Ciryl Gane

Francis Ngannou defended his UFC heavyweight title with a unanimous decision win over Ciryl Gane at UFC 270, despite suffering a torn MCL just weeks before the fight.

There were not the striking fireworks that many expected from the two giants, but Ngannou displayed impressive grappling skills, taking Gane down multiple times and, although he didn’t do massive damage on the floor, his sustained top control was a big part of his win.

The challenger had started impressively, but the champion had quite clearly scored the decision win by the end of round five, with the judges scoring the fight 48-47, 48-47, and 49-46.

While it wasn’t a classic, the victory will go down as an incredible impressive one as Ngannou revealed the brutal knee injury he suffered just three weeks ago, and that he refused to pull out of the fight despite it.

‘It’s been an incredible journey, a very tough training camp, very tough 10 months,’ Ngannou told Joe Rogan immediately after the fight.

‘Three weeks ago I hurt my knee, tore my MCL completely, hurt my ACL and all that stuff.

‘They wanted to call off this fight but I couldn’t see myself retreat from this fight because it was a moment for me to make a statement and remind people that I’m the champ.

‘You guys might sleep on me, kind of forget about me, but I put in work every day and now I belong to Extreme Couture, we have great coaches there for wrestling and jiu-jitsu, so my ground game is evolving, I’m going to be on another level.’

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