{"id":72989,"date":"2022-12-22T18:00:08","date_gmt":"2022-12-22T18:00:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.africannewspaper.net\/2022\/12\/22\/mma-2022-a-very-difficult-year-for-the-3-african-champions\/"},"modified":"2022-12-22T18:00:26","modified_gmt":"2022-12-22T18:00:26","slug":"mma-2022-a-very-difficult-year-for-the-3-african-champions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.africannewspaper.net\/2022\/12\/22\/mma-2022-a-very-difficult-year-for-the-3-african-champions\/","title":{"rendered":"MMA: 2022, a very difficult year for the 3 African champions"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Kamaru Usman will always remember December 11, 2021.  The Nigerian was designated that day \u201cbest MMA fighter of the year\u201d.  This was a well-deserved title.  The native of Auchi in Nigeria had just secured three victories in title defenses, defeating the Brazilian Gilbert Burn, as well as Colby Covington and Jorge Masdival.  After these three amazing victories, Usman needed to rest for a while and had wrist surgery.  He is now unable to train for several months.<\/p>\n<p>Kamaru Uzman returned to the Octagon on August 20, 2022, for another defense of his light-heavyweight title.  Unfortunately, he suffered a resounding KO from L\u00e9on Edwards in the last seconds of the game when he seemed to be leading in points.  His compatriot Israel Adesanya was also affected by the same situation.  The 5th saw Alex Pereira take a terrible knockout by the Last Stylebender<sup>e<\/sup>He won the fight in the final round.  The 31-year old Nigerian loses his title as middleweight.  Adesanya had at least fought in and won two fights earlier than Kamaru Usman.<\/p>\n<p>The 3<sup>e<\/sup>Francis Ngannou, a MMA star from Africa, keeps his champion title.  He had managed to win the French Cyril Gane fight in January 2022. He had health problems, and he had disagreements with the leaders after his success.<a rel=\"nofollow noopener\" href=\"https:\/\/www.ufc.com\/\" data-wpel-link=\"external\" target=\"_blank\">cfu<\/a>.  The Cameroonian had a knee operation and is still recovering.  Ngannou has to wait until Gane is able to return to octagon and sign a new win.  There is talk of Gane&#8217;s possible return in March 2023. Therefore, he will remain for more than a year with no fights.<\/p>\n<p>This article was first published on Sport News Africa.<\/p>\n<p>Source: <a href=\"https:\/\/sportnewsafrica.com\/a-la-une\/mma-2022-une-annee-tres-difficile-pour-les-3-champions-africains\/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=mma-2022-une-annee-tres-difficile-pour-les-3-champions-africains\">sportnewsafrica<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Kamaru Usman will always remember December 11, 2021. The Nigerian was designated that day \u201cbest MMA fighter of the year\u201d. This was a well-deserved title. The native of Auchi in Nigeria had just secured three victories in title defenses, defeating the Brazilian Gilbert Burn, as well as Colby Covington and Jorge Masdival. After these three [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":72991,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v17.8 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>MMA: 2022, a very difficult year for the 3 African champions - African News Paper<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.africannewspaper.net\/2022\/12\/22\/mma-2022-a-very-difficult-year-for-the-3-african-champions\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"MMA: 2022, a very difficult year for the 3 African champions - African News Paper\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Kamaru Usman will always remember December 11, 2021. The Nigerian was designated that day \u201cbest MMA fighter of the year\u201d. This was a well-deserved title. The native of Auchi in Nigeria had just secured three victories in title defenses, defeating the Brazilian Gilbert Burn, as well as Colby Covington and Jorge Masdival. 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