Jairzinho Rozenstruik’s fast rise in the UFC has impressed just about everyone except Francis Ngannou.
Ngannou (14-3 MMA, 9-2 UFC) has long campaigned for another crack at the UFC heavyweight title but instead, he draws fellow knockout artist Rozenstruik (10-0 MMA, 4-0 UFC) in the UFC on ESPN 8 headliner.
The fight could very well determine the No. 1 contender for Stipe Miocic’s belt, pitting two surging competitors. Ngannou has knocked out his last three opponents in the first round, whereas Rozenstruik is coming off one of the greatest comebacks in UFC history, knocking Alistair Overeem out with less than 10 seconds left in a five-round fight he was on the verge of losing.
Based on what Ngannou has seen of Rozenstruik’s UFC career, he’s not too impressed, but that doesn’t mean he’ll take him lightly.
“No I haven’t seen nothing to impress me,” Ngannou told MMA Junkie. “Regarding that fight against Overeem, I mean, he got beat up the entire fight and he got lucky at the end of the fight basically by the early stoppage. The referee, in my opinion was early and you know, he gave him the win but honestly his UFC career, nothing to impress. I haven’t seen nothing, but with that being said, it’s not to underestimate him because he was a kickboxer and he has some good hands so he knows the striking game. Now lets find out what he knows about MMA.”
Ngannou has called out Alexander Volkov for months, but claims Volkov has turned down the fight on numerous occasions. Instead, he drew Rozenstruik, someone he admits wasn’t even on his radar a few months ago.
“Honestly he wasn’t the one that I was expecting but they wanted him to fight me and that’s why they made it so fast,” Ngannou said. “The guy went from ranked what, he was ranked 13 or 14 to No. 5 basically with that fight, that fight he had against Alistair Overeem so it was clear that they just wanted to push him up and to make that fight happen.”
Following his win over Overeem, Rozenstruik called Ngannou out, something we don’t often see. For Ngannou, who’s been eager to compete, he’s happy to have found a top-ranked contender who’s willing to fight him.
“Realistically, Volkov was the one making sense but Volkov has been turning down the fight several times,” Ngannou said. “Rozenstruik was obviously calling me out which is something that doesn’t happen often so at least with Rozenstruik, you know for a fact that the fight will happen.”
In a battle of two powerhouses, Ngannou, who boasts a 100 percent finish rate in his 14 career victories, can only envision the fight going down one way.
“The only way I see the fight going is me knocking him out,” Ngannou said. “Round 1 or Round 2, I don’t know so I hope he’s good enough to pass Round 1 because Round 1 I’ll just take to set up.”
Francis Ngannou not impressed with Jairzinho Rozenstruik but won't underestimate him