Francis Ngannou knocked out Renan Ferreira in the first round of their fight just months after the former UFC heavyweight champion tragically lost his one-year-old son.
Ngannou made a return to MMA after his recent switch to boxing saw him take on Tyson Fury and Anthony Joshua with varying degrees of success.
Against Fury he very nearly shocked the world, dropping ‘The Gypsy King’ en route to a split-decision defeat.
But, Joshua did what many believed Fury would do against the boxing novice and knocked him out cold in just two rounds.
In his return to MMA he destroyed PFL champion Renan Ferreira inside four minutes taking him down and beating him until the referee stopped the fight.
Following the fight he spoke about his son Kobe.
“I can’t think about anything other than my son Kobe,” he said. “I only took this fight because of him and I’m done. I hope they can remember his name because, without Kobe, we wouldn’t be here tonight and I wouldn’t have fought. Thank you everyone for coming, thank you to Saudi Arabia, to Riyadh for being a great host, having us here and looking after us. The people are are lovely and supportive and today I have a fanbase in Saudi and what I can call a family.
It has been tough. Not only the training camp but the past few days have been full of emotion. I couldn’t do anything without thinking about it. I tried to be strong and give everything to keep moving but it’s hard.”
“I knew I hadn’t missed a step. As soon as I walked into the gym for MMA I knew everything was still there. It was just about managing my emotions and dealing with life. That’s what I was about, I’ve been working hard and we’re here, we finally got a. result.
“Thank you to my team, my family, everybody who has been around here. I took them away from their family for almost two months to support me and my crazy dream which has no limit. I don’t know if my dream makes sense but here we are, thank you guys.
