Francis Ngannou 's coach says his fighter's kicks are more painful than being hit in the back with a baseball bat.
Ngannou makes the first defence of his heavyweight title this weekend against interim titleholder Ciryl Gane at UFC 270 in Anaheim, California.
'The Predator' trains at Xtreme Couture in Las Vegas under the guidance of his head coaches Eric Nicksick and Dewey Cooper.
He moved to the gym after suffering consecutive losses in 2018 and falling out with coach Fernand Lopez at the MMA Factory in Paris.
And Nicksick revealed the power of Ngannou's leg kicks once left him unable to walk for two weeks.
“I’ve been hit in the back with a baseball bat before, and literally the bat, it broke. It was a wooden bat, it broke across my back, and it didn’t bother me one bit,” Nicksick said on The MMA Hour.
"Then I’ve been kicked by Francis to the point where I couldn’t walk for two weeks, man. Like, it’s bad. It hurts, man. It hurts bad.
"I’ll have the Fairtex (leg) pads on, and he’ll start kicking that pad — and the pad, all of a sudden, feels like it starts to get scared, and the pad starts to move apart.
"You’re like, ‘Oh man, this thing’s going to land hard. This thing’s going to land flush.’"
Ngannou holds the record for the hardest punch ever landed at 129,161 units, with Dana White putting that figure into real-life situations.
“His punches are equivalent to 96 horsepower. That’s equal to getting hit by a Ford Escort going as fast as it can and it’s more powerful than a 12-pound sledgehammer from full force overhead," he said.
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All but one of Ngannou's wins in the UFC have come by knockout, with his four wins before claiming the title last year all taking place in under 90-seconds.
And Nicksick said Ngannou's "ungodly" power is something he has naturally and cannot be developed in training.
“It’s a different type of power, man, the way that this man can kick and punch and throw and generate power. It’s ungodly. There’s nothing that you can train to be like, that type of power," Nicksick continued.
"I think it’s just our job as coaches to be able to understand what’s next — how do you add on to that power? How do you not fall over that power?
"Then what attributes or what strikes can you do to go off of that. So those are the things that I think we’ve worked on a lot.
"But dude, I’ll tell you what, man — poor Dewey [Cooper]. Dewey’s elbows, my legs, my body, it’s just getting beat up constantly.”
