Francis Ngannou vs Renan Ferreira Results: Live Winners, Losers from PFL Super Fights | News, Scores, Highlights, Stats, and Rumors
Ray Sefo wraps the PFL Super Fights belt around Francis Ngannou’s waist.PFL
Heading into Saturday’s PFL card, Francis Ngannou remained the lineal MMA heavyweight champion, which is more significant than a lot of people realize. I think Erik Magraken, a lawyer who specializes in combat sports, said it best on X.
“A lineal claim follows the fighter,” he explained. “It does not belong to a promoter. It is a claim that belongs to the fighter. A real title. Francis earned it. It’s his until someone beats him.”
In addition to the lineal MMA title, Ngannou’s main event fight with Renan Fereira would also decide the lineal UFC, PRIDE, Strikeforce, Bellator, DREAM, IFL, EliteXC, WAMMA, and YAMMA Pit Fighting heavyweight titles. Make no mistake about it: this fight was for MMA’s true heavyweight crown, contrary to everything UFC promotional material will tell us in the lead-up to next month’s Jon Jones vs. Stipe Miocic title fight.
Ngannou is still the sole owner of that crown.
Just as he has done so many times before, the Cameroonian-born Frenchman erased his hulking foe in quick and brutal fashion, first taking him down with an ever improving wrestling game, then finishing him off with a shower of ground punches that may as well have been meteor strikes.
It was an extremely impressive performance, in part because Ngannou’s boxing career has kept him out of the MMA cage for several years, but even more so because he lost his young son Kobe in the lead-up to the fight.
“The past two days were very tough,” a teary-eyed Ngannou said in a gut-wrenching post-fight interview. “There was a lot of emotion. I couldn’t do anything without thinking of him.
“I hope they remember his name. Without Kobe, I wouldn’t be here tonight.”
“Please remember by son Kobe.”
Today, there is no question MMA fans will remember Kobe, just as they’ll remember his father, the true king of the sport’s most dangerous weight class, and a man who as accomplished unbelievable feats in the face of unimaginable challenges.
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