For a few minutes on Sunday night, a few seconds of footage that comprised the UFC Phoenix main event functioned as a Rorschach test of sorts for MMA observers. Upon a single viewing or multiple replays, different conclusions were drawn on whether it was Francis Ngannou’s ungodly power that put Cain Velasquez down, or it was Velasquez’s own knee that betrayed him.
The debate says as much about the reverence for the heavyweight great Velasquez as it does about the doubt that infected Ngannou’s bandwagon after his back-to-back losses in 2018. Ngannou, some suggested then, might be irrevocably broken.