Francis Ngannou was understandably distraught after watching his longtime friend Israel Adesanya suffer a second-round knockout loss in his UFC Seattle main event against Joe Pyfer.
It was the fourth straight loss for Adesanya, who came out looking good early in the fight, showing off his accuracy and power as he popped Pyfer several times in the striking exchanges. Unfortunately for him, Pyfer eventually turned the tables after dragging the fight to the ground where he first looked for a submission before flattening out the former middleweight champion and unleashing a barrage of punches that ended the fight.
Adesanya made no excuses after the loss but Ngannou admits it was hard to watch and it was still tough to reflect on the fight when he posted his reaction a day later.
“Watching Izzy’s fight last night, [I] was heartbroken,” Ngannou said on Instagram. “It reminds you how ungrateful this sport is. Sometimes it’s good at you, sometimes no matter what you do, it lets you down.”
It wasn’t that long ago that Ngannou, Adesanya and Kamaru Usman were celebrating as the “three kings” from Africa while they were all holding onto UFC gold. There was plenty of talk during that time about the UFC potentially holding an event in Africa where one or potentially all of them could compete.
But Ngannou eventually relinquished his title to leave the UFC in free agency before signing with PFL and crossing over to boxing while Usman’s reign ended with a knockout loss to Leon Edwards. As for Adesanya, he became a two-time UFC champion with a knockout win over Alex Pereira but since then he’s dropped four fights in a row including his title fight loss to Sean Strickland.
While Adesanya has faced plenty of adversity during his recent run, Ngannou acknowledged that perhaps the toughest pill to swallow was seeing how his old friend was performing prior to the knockout.
That just speaks volumes how quickly the momentum in a fight can change after Adesanya appeared ready to score a finish of his own before Pyfer ultimately got the job done moments later.
“He looked sharp. He looked very sharp,” Ngannou said afterwards. “After the first round, I’m like oh we get this, this is good, he’s back. But man, sometimes we plan but God has other plans. I can only imagine how tough Izzy is to come back out of it. To rebound.”
Despite his 0-4 record in his past four outings, Adesanya vowed that he wasn’t done and proclaimed “I’m not f*cking leaving” when asked about what comes next for him after this latest setback.