{"id":346692,"date":"2020-04-13T08:53:14","date_gmt":"2020-04-13T15:53:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/staging.tcpcharms.com\/bjpenn\/?p=346692"},"modified":"2020-04-13T08:53:14","modified_gmt":"2020-04-13T15:53:14","slug":"francis-ngannou-believes-hes-already-earned-title-shot","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/staging.tcpcharms.com\/bjpenn\/mma-news\/ufc\/francis-ngannou-believes-hes-already-earned-title-shot\/","title":{"rendered":"Francis Ngannou believes he&#8217;s already earned title shot"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Francis Ngannou was expected to battle Jairzinho Rozenstruik at the recently canceled UFC 249 card. While this was a massive fight for the division, Ngannou feels he&#8217;s already earned another crack at UFC heavyweight champ Stipe Miocic.<\/p>\n<p>Ngannou, who is riding consecutive knockout wins over Curtis Blaydes, Cain Velasquez and Junior dos Santos, opened up on this topic on <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=BeHHIQnlYY0\">BJPENN.com&#8217;s<em> Inside The Cage. <\/em><\/a><\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"500\" data-dnt=\"true\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">\u201cWhat do I believe? I believe I should be fighting for the title right now.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Francis Ngannou says he feels he should currently be fighting for the UFC heavyweight title. <\/p>\n<p>Full interview: <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/PU63Z9Rhfq\">https:\/\/t.co\/PU63Z9Rhfq<\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/If4uioZJ0W\">pic.twitter.com\/If4uioZJ0W<\/a><\/p>\n<p>&mdash; Mike Pendleton (@MP2310) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/MP2310\/status\/1248232158377934850?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">April 9, 2020<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p>&#8220;What do I believe? I believe that I should be fighting for a title right now,&#8221; Ngannou said confidently. &#8220;I thought after Stipe-DC, I would be the one in line, that&#8217;s what I believed. Now I&#8217;m here, I&#8217;m about to do this fight [against Rozenstruik] which is not for the title or an interim title. The point is, it&#8217;s not my call. I don&#8217;t decide what it&#8217;s going to be regardless what my thought is about what is fair, once again it&#8217;s not my call so I just do what I have to do. I truly believe that I was in the spot to fight for the title, that&#8217;s my thought.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Back at UFC 220 in January of 2018, Ngannou faced Miocic in his first title opportunity, but came up short, losing a unanimous decision. Following his fight against Miocic, Ngannou dropped a second-straight fight to Derrick Lewis, but made a huge turnaround as he reeled off his current three-fight winning streak.<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s hard to argue against Francis Ngannou&#8217;s claim for a heavyweight title shot given his recent run, and a win at UFC 249 likely would have made his claim undebatable.<\/p>\n<p>Do you think Francis Ngannou deserves another crack at heavyweight gold?<\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><i>This article first appeared on\u00a0<\/i><a href=\"http:\/\/staging.tcpcharms.com\/bjpenn\/\"><span class=\"s1\"><i>BJPENN.com<\/i><\/span><\/a><i>\u00a0on 4\/13\/2020. <\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Francis Ngannou was expected to battle Jairzinho Rozenstruik at the recently canceled UFC 249 card. While this was a massive fight for the division, Ngannou feels he&#8217;s already earned another crack at UFC heavyweight champ Stipe Miocic. Ngannou, who is riding consecutive knockout wins over Curtis Blaydes, Cain Velasquez and Junior dos Santos, opened up [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":54460,"featured_media":302366,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false},"categories":[2674,10646,39610],"tags":[39616],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v19.7 (Yoast SEO v19.14) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Francis Ngannou believes he&#039;s already earned title shot | BJPenn.com<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Currently riding a three-fight winning streak in the division, Francis Ngannou believes he should be fighting for the UFC heavyweight title.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" 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