Francis Ngannou says UFC champion Stipe Miocic won’t take him to ‘deep water’

Francis Ngannou has done his part to intimidate mostly everyone connected to the UFC. His final unmoved witness is heavyweight champion Stipe Miocic.

In a scene-stealing moment at the UFC 220 news conference last week in Las Vegas, Ngannou insisted that Miocic was fretting their Jan. 20 title fight in Boston, prompting Miocic to deliver an expression of unworried calm that will likely remain until they close the octagon door in two weeks.

“This is what I signed up for. Why would I be intimidated by another man?” Miocic asked.

UFC President Dana White then noted that Ngannou’s punch has been tested to be the equivalent of 96 horsepower, “more powerful than a 12-pound sledgehammer being swung from full force overhead,” and like getting “hit by a Ford Escort going as fast as it can.”

When the fight begins, Miocic, seeking to become the UFC’s first heavyweight champion to successfully defend his belt three consecutive times, will confront that devastating striker who needed just 1 minute, 3 seconds to knock out veteran Alistair Overeem with one of those sledgehammer punches last month.

“[Miocic] will try to survive, but whatever he’s going to try, I will touch him and connect, and you know what happens when I connect,” Ngannou said.

In the past two years, he has knocked out five of six opponents, and submitted the other wounded foe in the first round.

His fast learning has been accelerated by his acceptance of the training methods supervised at the UFC’s Performance Institute in Las Vegas, which opened to fighters last year in an effort to reduce injuries by better educating the athletes through their fight preparation.

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“I didn’t have [it] when I moved from Paris to here,” said Ngannou, originally from Cameroon. “It’s helpful.”

Ngannou opted to leave Las Vegas this week to conclude what he called his “strategy” preparation in Paris, before returning to Boston for fight week.

Because of Ngannou’s unfamiliarity with fights that extend to the third round, Miocic has said he intends to test Ngannnou’s abilities in the “deep waters.”

“There is no way for [Miocic] to know that because he’s not the guy who’s going to bring me to the deep water,” Ngannou said.

“I trust in myself. I know I am the guy to do the job. I know when I walk into the octagon why I’m walking there and what I’m able to do.

“People might just see the knockout” in forming their overall impression of Ngannou’s talent, “but they don’t know everything that I’m able to do because they haven’t seen me in the deep waters, but he will know what I can do and I won’t be in the deep water for a long time.”