'Everything is possible' to Francis Ngannou, maybe even a UFC title shot this year

LAS VEGAS – UFC heavyweight contender Francis Ngannou doesn’t have a fight lined up. First thing’s first – he needs to get acclimated.

Ngannou (10-1 MMA, 5-0 UFC), currently ranked No. 10 in the latest USA TODAY Sports/MMAjunkie MMA heavyweight rankings, announced today that he’s relocated to Las Vegas, where MMAjunkie caught up with him at the UFC’s new corporate headquarters. He said the resources now online for the promotion’s athletes helped him make the decision to move.

“Now, we have the (Athlete) Performance Institute,” Ngannou said. “That is very important. We still thought about other cities, but when we knew that they have the institute, and they told us what (the institute does), we thought that is the best way to go.”

A native of Paris, Ngannou admits he’s a little homesick. But he’s here to do a job. Although he doesn’t pledge allegiance to any particular team at the moment, he said he can see himself drawing from a number of sources to bring his skills to the next level.

Of course, one of the main questions is when he gets to use those skills. UFC fans most recently saw him in the octagon in January at UFC on FOX 23, where he notched a first-round TKO of ex-champ Andrei Arlovski.

Now 5-0 in the octagon, Ngannou appears to be in the driver’s seat when it comes to his career. And the UFC heavyweight division needs new contenders with ex-champ Junior Dos Santos (18-4 MMA, 12-3 UFC) and champ Stipe Miocic (16-2 MMA, 10-2 UFC) set to clash at UFC 211.

At the moment, Ngannou is focused more on becoming the best version of himself. But what if an opportunity arises sooner than later?

“Everything is possible,” he said. “It depends on a lot of things. It could be this year or next year.”

Check out our one-on-one interview with Ngannou above.

And for more on the UFC’s upcoming schedule, check out the UFC Rumors section of the site.