Francis Ngannou entered the UFC in 2015 just five fights into his professional career, and skyrocketed throughout the division due to his performances inside the Octagon. In just over two years upon entering the UFC, Ngannou would go on a six-fight winning streak which would lead him to get a title shot against Stipe Miocic.<\/p>\n
Although he would come up short in his attempt at UFC gold<\/a>, Francis Ngannou showed he could still hang with the very best heavyweights in the world. Following his fight against Miocic, Ngannou would drop his second consecutive fight in a lackluster showing against Derrick Lewis, and then change followed shortly thereafter.<\/p>\n That change would come in a move to the Xtreme Couture gym in Las Vegas, Nevada, and the results have been showing ever since. After moving to Xtreme Couture<\/a> before a rematch against Curtis Blaydes in November of 2018, Ngannou would go on to reel off three first-round knockout finishes. His recent success led him to a scheduled fight against Jairzinho Rozenstruik on March 28, but that fight has been postponed due to the COVID-19 pandemic.<\/p>\n Behind Ngannou at Xtreme Couture is coach Eric Nicksick who has been working with him for his last two fights and is mainstay coaching figure at the Vegas-based gym. Nicksick recently spoke with BJPenn.com<\/a> and discussed the changes and improvements Ngannou has made in his game, how he would perform in a boxing ring, and how they’ve dealt with the COVID-19 pandemic postponing their fight.<\/p>\n In his fight against Miocic, there were clear signs of a missing ground game from Ngannou and although he posses remarkable knockout power, Nicksick said making the changes for Ngannou wasn’t going to take much from him.<\/p>\n “It’s not going to take much because we saw what happened when he fought Stipe [Miocic] and that glaring hole. To me, it’s more of a mindset and he can go back to the drawing board and continue to work on the things that he’s really good at already right now, or we can start delving into the stuff that we need to get better at and have this championship mindset.<\/p>\n \u201cIf we didn\u2019t work on one more thing that has to do with striking from here on out, I guarantee you Francis Ngannou can still knock out a lot of people in this world\u201d<\/p>\n \u2066@Eric_XCMMA<\/a>\u2069 discusses the evolvement of \u2066@francis_ngannou<\/a>\u2069 <\/p>\n Full episode: https:\/\/t.co\/1XfkQU3XOl<\/a> pic.twitter.com\/u4k47QUTBx<\/a><\/p>\n — Mike Pendleton (@MP2310) March 21, 2020<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n