Cleveland Ohio’s Stipe Miocic is the UFC Heavyweight champion and along with that comes with the title of “baddest man on the planet”. Hard to argue…Miocic has been pretty bad throughout his career(and by bad I mean very good. Words.). Since losing an all-out war in a competitive fight with Junior Dos Santos in 2014, Miocic has absolutely laid waste to everyone who’s been put in front of him since. But when it comes to his next opponent, Francis Ngannou…he’s been doing that as well, most commonly with incredible one-punch knockouts. Because of Ngannou’s impressive tear, he has garnered plenty of attention and hype. So much so that maybe the champion’s own organization could be overlooking him. He happens to think so as he said today on the MMA Hour:

“Obviously, for sure. Listen, I feel a little bit disrespected, but I’m not going to dwell on it. He’s got more hype on him I guess. The guy hits super hard. We’re making a big thing about it, I’ve fought some good guys, you know? That’s how we are. I’m not much of a trash talker I just like to fight, that’s what I do.

All the pressure is on him, honestly. The best guys he’s faced, I knocked them out two years ago. So, whatever. I saw the one submission he had against Anthony Hamilton, the Kimura or whatever, I saw that, but I haven’t really seen any groundwork,” Miocic said. “I haven’t really watched, I’ve seen that fight and Andrei Arlovski’s fight are what I’ve seen watching him fight. He definitely has the hype behind him. He definitely has the punching power behind him. So, we’ll see on January 20 how things go.”

Miocic vs Ngannou headlines UFC 220 on January 20. For the champion, Miocic, a win will break the record for most Heavyweight title defenses(current record is two). Talk about a challenge for your record breaker…will the champion pull it off?

This article first appeared on BJPenn.com on 1/8/2018.