BLOOMINGTON, Minn. – It can be easy to forget just how untraditional a path Francis Ngannou took to wind up here, fighting in the main event of UFC on ESPN 3 on Saturday night. You see him walking around the host hotel or hitting pads at the open workout, and sure, he fits in with the other pro fighters well enough. He’s big and tough. He’s clearly an athlete, though perhaps with a flashier fashion sense than many other fighters.



Plus, if you follow this sport, it feels like you’ve been hearing about him for years. Ngannou? Yeah, he’s a bona fide in this sport, a capital-g Guy.



Then there are other moments, like when he mentions in an offhand fashion that he used to sleep in one particular parking lot near the AccorHotels Arena in Paris, how he’d brush his teeth out there in the morning, looking at the building where he could only dream of fighting professionally some day.



In those moments, you start to do some math. You...