He had anticipated that everything outside of the actual fight would be different, but he knew that once that Octagon door locked it would feel just like home. So, he finally made the UFC walk, full of confidence and excited for a tough fight against Marc-Andre Barriault.
16 seconds in – the fight was over. Njokuani had knocked Barriault out. The KO would go down in a tie for the 13th fastest finish for a debuting fighter in UFC history.
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“I wish I could do it again,” Njokuani laughed in an interview with UFC.com. “It meant a lot. I couldn’t write out the story any better. It’s not like I just jumped into the game and got a UFC debut. I’ve been doing this for the longest and I’ve been trying to get in for the longest, and to finally get in and make a debut like that, it was like the cherry on top.”
Njokuani didn’t expect to defeat Barriault in such quick and decisive fashion. He was expecting a three-round battle with the Canadian middleweight, but he’s certainly not disappointed with how the fight turned out.
Although the result was phenomenal, the best part of the win had to do with the people that had been by Njokuani’s side for years.
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“In all honesty, I could feel the difference on how people viewed me,” Njokuani said. “At the same time, I could see all the people that saw my rise from when I started out and how proud they were of me. It was a big shift, and I can finally say I saw that.”
Witnessing that shift for the first time only added to Njokuani’s motivation to follow up his stellar debut with an amazing performance against Duško Todorović at UFC Fight Night: Holm vs Vieira. The 33-year-old knows that coming out flat against Todorović would waste the momentum he gained in his debut.