Brendan Schaub Believes Junior Dos Santos Was Affected By Fear Of Francis Ngannou's Power

Junior dos Santos went into his much-anticipated heavyweight bout against Francis Ngannou last Saturday at UFC Minneapolis full of confidence but like many men before him, quickly fell victim to the French-Cameroonian’s numbing power.

“Cigano” went into last weekend’s main event riding a three-fight winning streak including two impressive finishes over Derrick Lewis and Tai Tuivasa, and the former champ believed he had the measure of his opponent Ngannou going into the fight.

However the fight didn’t play out as he expected with the Brazilian getting turned around in an early exchange before being hit behind the ear by “The Predator” putting the lights out.

Ex-UFC heavyweight turned comedian Brendan Schaub took to his “Below The Belt” podcast to talk about the fight and said he believed Dos Santos looked hesitant in the fight as he was wary of his opponents power:

“Told you guys first-round TKO. I didn’t think he was gonna knock him out, but I thought he’d wobble him and finish him with punches on the ground. You don’t realize how f---ing hard Francis hits. A lot of those they weren’t like flush. The only flush one, and it was weird how Junior dos Santos turned his back. It’s like, what the f--- are you doing dude? And then boom behind the ear which, it’s a transition, that’s a legal blow, boom behind the ear and then JDS is like ‘what?’ And then [the followup punch]. That was the flush one, then he went face down.

“That was the first time dos Santos looked a little hesitant. That should show you how scary Francis is cause dos Santos was like scared to get hit. You could tell he was like, ‘oh f--- dude.’”