For the longest time, Francis Ngannou was the hardest hitter in the UFC—no debate. He even had the record to prove it, registering a mind-blowing punch that Dana White once compared to getting hit by a Ford Escort. Then, Alex ‘Poatan’ Pereira came along, officially taking the crown as the UFC’s hardest puncher. Now, Joe Rogan wants to give Ngannou another shot at the punching machine, with the knowledge that he is someone to compete with.
Back in 2017, Ngannou set the world record for the hardest punch ever recorded on the PowerKube machine, registering an astounding 129,161 units.
This remarkable feat underscored his reputation as one of the most formidable strikers in combat sports history. For most fans, this number also helped them make sense of the bizarre KOs Ngannou handed out to the likes of Alistair Overeem, Curtis Blaydes, and the like.
However, at the time, there was nobody to compete with him in the power department. Pereira would make his debut in 2021, but by the time he rose to prominence, Ngannou had already left the organization.
Pereira would later go on to try his luck at punching the same machine and beat Ngannou’s high score by 62,000 units, scoring an insane 191,796 in the process.
Rogan now argues that Nganannou would have punched harder had he known of old Stone Hands (Poatan in Portuguese).
While discussing the power of the heavier divisions of the UFC, Rogan said that everybody in those weight classes hit hard.
“But that dude (Pereira) hits hard hard… He has more power than Ngannou, that’s crazy”, Rogan said, still seemingly bewildered.
He would then go on to tell the story of the punching machine and add, “I want to give Francis a second chance at it. I feel like he was not swinging hard enough. I feel like he can probably punch harder than he did… Give him a second crack at it.”
At this point, it is unlikely that Dana White is allowing Ngannou in the building, let alone use his equipment so that he can beat his biggest fighter of the last 10 years.
Besides, Pereira is also on the precipice of doing something that Ngannou had wanted to do for a long time, but fate never allowed it.
Pereira to take Ngannou’s dream match-up?
In the years that Ngannou was the heavyweight champion (2021-2023), Jones stayed away from the UFC. The Rochester native had vacated his light heavyweight title with the aim of competing for the heavyweight title but claimed he needed time to put on the weight and get comfortable.
That wait time was 3 years of Ngannou’s prime in the UFC. Ngannou would leave the UFC on January 14, 2023, after spending months, nay, years asking Jones to step up and take him on.
However, Jones would return 2 months after Ngannou’s departure from the promotion and fight for his title against Ciryl Gane at UFC 285.
And so, the biggest heavyweight title fight in the UFC just never came to be.
Jones has been singing the same song, more or less, about a title unification fight with interim champion Tom Aspinall. But he is interested in fighting Pereira. In fact, the elation with which he seems to have offered the alternative might suggest he’s considering this match-up a more than happy bargain.
Should he defend his title against Aspinall, like the UFC brass wants, and should Pereira keep his 205 lbs title after this weekend, there’s a good chance that the UFC will allow the fighters to sign on the dotted line for a scheduled date.
