UFC Vegas 30: Is Ciryl Gane a better prospect than Francis Ngannou?
The French heavyweight looks to continue his march towards the top of the division with a date opposite Alexander Volkov this weekend
When Ciryl Gane first arrived in the UFC, the comparisons to Francis Ngannou were easy to make.
Each man trained under Fernand Lopez at the MMA Factory in Paris. Both were impressive physical specimens that made a quick, seamless transition to mixed martial arts, absorbing knowledge and synthesizing it into performance at an incredible rate. Each looked like a potential world-beater, with experience, in specific situations and just in terms of cage time, being the one thing they lacked.
Ngannou was terrifying to watch early on — a marauder who blasted through his first six UFC opponents, finishing each of them in increasingly devastating fashion. After his first two adversaries saw the second round, the next four were taken out with greater precision, none lasting more than two minutes, and the one that came closest, Anthony Hamilton, getting submitted with a move we were told Ngannou learned in the back prior to walking out.
When he fought Alistair Overeem at UFC 218 in Detroit, you got the sense going in that if he defeated the Dutch veteran, a title shot would be next. One minute and 42 seconds into the contest, Ngannou uncorked a left hand that sent Overeem’s head snapping back like a Pez dispenser, instantly separating him from his consciousness and propelling the surging heavyweight from Cameroon into the stratosphere.
We all know what happened next: a championship bout against Stipe Miocic was signed for six weeks later at UFC 220 in Boston; a promotional campaign touting Ngannou as a “one in a million” type of figure was rolled out, and the emerging superstar ended up drinking too much of his own Kool-Aid and was overwhelmed in the fight… and was still shook in the one after that too.
Since then, Ngannou has done everything right — he’s tightened up his circle, poured himself into improving as a fighter, and risen to the top of the heavyweight division, answering every question that remained about him (and more) in his rematch with Miocic earlier this year to claim the heavyweight title and reach the position just about everyone expected he would reach as he was carving his path of destruction prior to UFC 220.
There hasn’t been the same electricity surrounding Gane, who makes his sixth UFC appearance in his second consecutive main event assignment this weekend opposite Alexander Volkov in a battle of Top 5 contenders.
Despite securing submission finishes in each of his first two fights, the “Bon Gamin” (translation: good kid) from Western France has been more of a steady riser in the heavyweight ranks, gaining a little more buzz and a little more momentum with each subsequent victory, of which there have been three, including a stoppage win over former champ Junior Dos Santos and a unanimous decision victory over Jairzinho Rozenstruik last time out.
Gane isn’t as imposing a figure as Ngannou, as the reigning champ traditionally weighs 10-15 pounds more than the emerging contender and has more of a “that’s what the scariest man on the planet looks like” vibe to him, even though they both stand six-foot-four and have an identical 83-inch reach. He hasn’t produced the same type of violent finishes either — his submission wins over Raphael Pessoa and Don’Tale Mayes showcasing greater skill and finesse and his stoppage against “Cigano” coming as a result of a flurry of blows, as opposed to the brute strength and one-shot finality of Ngannou’s early UFC triumphs.
But while that doesn’t resonate with the audience or look as good on a highlight reel, it’s actually a big part of why I think Gane is the better prospect of the two.
We saw in Ngannou’s first meeting with Miocic that he didn’t have a Plan B.
When he hit the champion with the same kind of shots that dispatched everyone else into the eternal slumber and Miocic kept coming, it clearly rattled the challenger. He threw everything at him over the opening five minutes, couldn’t get him out of there, and then spent the next four rounds trying to figure out what in the hell went wrong, as if he hadn’t accounted for the fact that he’d one day run into someone that could withstand one of his clubbing blows.
That confusion, disappointment, and doubt stayed with him through his bout with Derrick Lewis five months and change later at UFC 226, where the heavyweight knockout artists engaged in a 15-minute staring contest where they combined to land 31 of the 100 strikes they threw over the course of the three-round non-affair.
Gane is a completely different fighter than Ngannou — more nimble and methodical, having exhibited a more diverse array of skills compared to the current champ, who is a rare athlete with incredible speed and power that is still in the process of refining his weapons. Though his background is in Muay Thai, he showed in those first two Octagon appearances that he has a submission game he can turn to if an opportunity is there, and his wins over Tanner Boser and Rozenstruik showed he’s content to work at range and win on the cards, confident in his ability to control things on the feet and avoid any real danger.
While some might quibble with Gane going the distance against Rozenstruik, that effort solidified for me that he’s both a better all-around prospect than Ngannou was during his ascent and a bona fide title contender right now, while still having plenty of room to get better.
Gane increased his striking output from one round to the next over each of the first four rounds of that February engagement, where he earned a clean sweep of the scorecards to push his record to 8-0 overall. Less than four years into his mixed martial arts career, the 31-year-old fought a patient, tactical fight against a feared knockout artist, keeping him off-balance and outside the entire time, solidifying his place in the Top 5 in the process. Although his output dipped a little in the final round, seeing Gane comfortably navigate a five-round fight this early in his career, but in the biggest moment of his career is the kind of thing that really stands out to me.
There were no nerves, no signs of hesitation or uncertainty; just a cool, calm, methodical approach from one of the most impressive emerging talents to enter the UFC in the last five years.
I was a big believer in Gane’s upside long before I ever spoke with he and Lopez, who often serves as a translator on calls for those few moments where his charge can’t find the words to express himself in English. His first three MMA bouts all took place in Quebec under the TKO banner, with Gane winning all three by stoppage, so I was aware of him as a prospect from the outset.
I also know that you have to take everything a coach says about one of their fighters with several grains of salt, depending on how over-the-top they are with their praise and where that athlete stands in terms of their development and the divisional hierarchy.
With both of those things established, it’s impossible not to become even more convinced of his abundant upside when Lopez bursts through one of Gane’s answers with a statement like this:
“Ciryl is not a rookie anymore — he’s a contender for the title! He’s a f****** contender! People need to know that. He’s humble, but I’ve never seen someone improving and growing that much, that fast, that well. I’m sorry to interrupt him, but it’s frustrating for me because people don’t realize how good he is. I’ve been training a lot of guys and (where he’s at) is beyond imagination.”
Now, he immediately started laughing and apologizing for being so fired up, and Gane chuckled in the background the whole time as if he was listening to a routine he’d heard a million times before and still enjoyed (like me when I watch stand-up specials on Netflix repeatedly), but make no mistake about it: he believes every word he said and wants more people to recognize it as well.
Note: Gane recognizes and believes it also, as he explained in the above piece, which was written ahead of his fight with Rozenstruik, but it’s just not in his character to speak that way about himself; he is, after all, “Bon Gamin.”
There are no one-to-one comparisons in MMA, so there is never going to be a definitive, indisputable “Prospect A is better than Prospect B” answer when looking at two elite talents; there are only opinions and preferences, which are allowed to differ.
Additionally, believing Prospect A is a better than Prospect B doesn’t necessarily mean they’re going to remain better or achieve more or would necessarily beat the other should they cross paths inside the Octagon either; it’s an opinion based on where one is now versus when the other was in a similar position, and things change over time.
With those two elements clarified, I do believe Gane is the better prospect of the two, as we’ve just seen more from him in his first five UFC appearances than we did Ngannou.
Where “The Predator” ripped through Bojan Mihaljovic and Anthony Hamilton in his third and fourth appearances, Gane dispatched Boser, an experienced, sturdy heavyweight who remains on the fringes of the Top 15 despite a couple recent setbacks, and Dos Santos, a former champion who was part of Ngannou’s “rehabilitation tour” following his back-to-back losses to start 2018.
Ngannou’s fifth opponent was Andrei Arlovski, a battle-scarred ex-titleholder riding a three-fight losing streak; Gane’s was Rozenstruik, who had rebounded from his loss to Ngannou by dispatching Dos Santos four months prior to Gane.
Whereas Ngannou faced Overeem in his sixth trip into the Octagon, Gane is facing Volkov, a still ascendent contender that has earned consecutive stoppage victories and boasts a 7-2 record in the UFC, which makes it interesting to ponder whether the French standout will get a title shot with a victory on Saturday the way Ngannou did following his sixth consecutive UFC triumph.
(Note: he probably won’t because the division is all kinds of messy right now)
There were never any real negatives to take away from Ngannou’s initial run of success, but questions remained; questions that ultimately got answered in his loss to Miocic. Although some might want to quibble with Gane not getting Boser and/or Rozenstruik out of there inside the distance, they were each pretty solid efforts, and more importantly, there aren’t a great deal of questions that remain to be answered heading into this clash with Volkov.
The performances haven’t been as devastating or caused as many shockwaves throughout the MMA community, but the tests have consistently been more difficult, and Gane has continued to pass them with top marks. At this point, he profiles to me as the more complete fighter, the more fully-formed prospect of the two, and with a victory on Saturday, Gane should move one step closer to sharing the Octagon with Ngannou.