If Renan Ferreira thought he'd struck it big when he knocked out Denis Gotsov and Ryan Bader in back-to-back fights, let him do the same to Francis Ngannou in their Oct. 19 bout in the main event of PFL pay-per-view card in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, and see what happens.
Ferreira would instantly become one of the biggest names in the sport.
He won the 2023 PFL heavyweight championship -- even though he lost his opening bout -- when he knocked out Gotsov on Nov. 24 in the second round. He then was the PFL's only winner in the PFL-Bellator Champions pay-per-view when he cold-cocked Bader in just 21 seconds on Feb. 24 in Riyadh.
That win over Bader earned him the bout with Ngannou, the former UFC heavyweight champion who left the company as a free agent in January 2023 and signed with the PFL on May 16, 2023. After going 0-2 in a pair of boxing matches, losing by split decision to Tyson Fury and by second-round knockout Anthony Joshua, Ngannou is back in MMA.
He hasn't fought a mixed martial arts bout since he successfully defended the title by outwrestling -- yes, outwrestling - Ciryl Gane on Jan. 22, 2022, at UFC 270.
Let's be honest: If Ngannou had been competing regularly and hadn't gone into boxing, and if he hadn't tragically lost his one-year-old son, Kobe, in April, he'd be an enormous favorite to defeat Ferreira. As it is, he's nearly a 3-1 favorite. At DraftKings Sportsbook, Ngannou is -290 and Ferreira is +235.
There are, though, numerous questions swirling around Ngannou. The most significant, of course, is his head space in his first fight after the tragic death of his son. But Ngannou is also coming off of a brutal knockout by Joshua. It's the only time in his career he'd been knocked out, but that one came violently.
Sometimes, fighters never recover from those kinds of knockouts. It will only have been a little more than seven months between the Joshua fight and when Ngannou steps in to face Ferreira.
It's not talked about as much, but there are nearly as many questions about Ferreira, if not more. Ferreira has three no-contests on his record, which is highly unusual. More unusual is that all three of them were losses at one point.
On May 6, 2021, Ferreira brought a 6-2 record into a PFL bout against Fabricio Werdum, another former UFC heavyweight champion. Ferreira was announced as the TKO winner that night, but Werdum appealed and it turned out that Ferreira had tapped to a triangle choke earlier. The bout was called a no-contest.
He won three in a row after that, scoring a decision over Carl Seumanutafa and then finishing Stuart Austin and Janelle Jones. He needed 31 seconds to finish Austin and 25 to get rid of Jones.
On June 24, 2022, he lost a unanimous decision to Klidson Abreu. He was knocked out in the first round on Aug. 13, 2022, by Ante Delija and then lost a unanimous decision to Rizvan Kuniev on April 7, 2023. But hot got fortunate in that both Abreu and Kuniev failed their PED tests, and so much like happened in the Werdum fight, he had his bouts changed to a no-contest.
The scary part if you're backing Ferreira in all of this is that he lost 16 of the 18 scored rounds in the fights with Kuniev and Abroad. Kuniev had initially won 30-27 on all cards, while Abreu won 29-28 twice and 30-27. Two judges gave Ferreira the second round of the Abreu fight. Otherwise, he was totally whitewashed.
Now, yes, both Kuniev and Abreu broke the rules and so they deserved what they got. But when looking at the Ngannou fight, it's wish to remember how Ferreira performed in those bouts.
Had those bouts stayed on his record and not been no contests, he'd have been 9-6, out of the 2023 tournament and never had the opportunity to fight either Bader or Ngannou.
He clearly can strike, and at 6-8, he'll have a four-inch height advantage. His reach is 85, two inches better than Ngannou's 83.
One mistake is all it takes when a fighter can punch like Ngannou and Ferreira. If it's Ferriera, and not Ngannou, who lands it, it will be life-changing for him.
He's a guy who should thank his lucky stars he's in the position he's in. Circumstances aided him greatly in getting to the top.
The question that needs to be answered is, is he good enough to take advantage of the massive breaks he's received in getting this chance? We'll know in six weeks or so.