“The Predator” is back. For the first time in 33 months, Francis Ngannou will make the walk to an octagon.

The former undisputed UFC heavyweight champion will return on Oct. 19 to face PFL heavyweight champion Renan Ferreira for the PFL Super Fight belt in Ngannou’s debut with the promotion.

Since defending his UFC heavyweight title against Ciryl Gane in January 2022, Ngannou has endured more than two years of negotiations, triumphs and heartbreak.

After spending 2022 recovering from surgery and waiting out the end of his contract to become the most sought-after free agent in MMA history, he spent the first half of 2023 negotiating a deal with the PFL that would allow him to compete as a boxer.

And then — after a world-class performance against lineal heavyweight champ Tyson Fury and a loss against Anthony Joshua — Ngannou suffered tragedy when his 15-month-old son died in April.

On Monday, Ngannou told The Athletic the loss left him with “a lot of insecurity, a lot of uncertainty,” and compared it to someone popping his life with a needle.

With Wednesday’s announcement, the 37-year-old said he has eagerly returned to the normalcy of his professional career.

And even after establishing himself as one of the most feared strikers in MMA history, he talked like a fighter hungry to prove himself.

“I have to prove that I can win this fight,” he said.

“The purpose (of this sport) is competing, giving your best every day. So yes I think I have something to prove, that I can still give my best.”

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As for what kind of fighter fans can expect nearly three years after his last MMA bout, Ngannou was bluntly simple: Much of what they’ve already seen.

“Just the same thing,” he said, later adding, “I think I show up doing everything to win the fight, knowing that I didn’t leave any stone unturned and that’s what I’m expecting to bring.”

If he’s right, he could change the landscape of the industry. The PFL has long been seen as a second-tier, if not third-tier, promotion to the UFC. Ngannou debuting with the same one-punch power that turned UFC’s heavyweight division upside down would give the PFL its most important moment.

Ferreira will be a formidable first opponent. The 6-foot-8, 34-year-old Brazillian is 13-3 and coming off a 21-second TKO of Ryan Bader in February for the “PFL vs. Bellator Champion” Super Belt. Before that, Ferreira defeated Denis Goltsov to win the 2023 PFL Heavyweight Tournament.

In an MMA era when “superfights” and long-hyped returns cause opponents to turn down years of other opportunities, such as Michael Chandler waiting for Conor McGregor in the UFC, this bout marks something different.

Ferreira took a calculated risk in sitting out the 2024 PFL season while he waited for Ngannou’s return after earning the shot by defeating Bader. He told MMA Fighting in March, “I’m very happy for this opportunity, and I hope it happens soon.”

Ngannou doesn’t talk lowly of Ferreira’s patience, comparing it to his own situation with becoming a free agent.

“When you have that opportunity, you just jump on it,” Ngannou told The Athletic. “Just as I went after my own opportunity in leaving the UFC when I chose that was necessary, I did what I had to do for my own opportunity.”

In the 15 months since signing with the PFL, Ngannou’s tactic of waiting out his contract hasn’t been duplicated by many others. But he doesn’t lose hope in changing the industry and believes his risk in 2022 built MMA-wide awareness of how fighter contracts work.

He even said some fighters have approached him for guidance on how to negotiate their future deals.

“Rome wasn’t built in one day. Change isn’t going to come around from one day or one year, maybe not five years,” he said. “But you can be certain that a lot of people today make moves and decisions using that as an example.”

He also doesn’t lose any sleep over the years that he did lose.

“I wasn’t missing anything. … My decision was for what I wanted and I what I think I should have done for me, so I don’t have regret.”

“At the end of the day, look at me. I think things played out for me just perfectly.”

Required reading

(Top photo courtesy of PFL)

Australia’s Michelle Jenneke tripped and fell during the women’s 100-meter hurdles event at the Paris Olympics on Wednesday.

Jenneke appeared to have an issue with the third hurdle on the track at Stade de France. The tumble ultimately caused her to finish in last place in the heat. 

She did finish the event, which leaves her hopes of qualifying for the semifinals alive. Jenneke could have her shot at redemption if she participates in a repechage, which effectively grants competitors a second chance. 

 Jenneke said she fell onto the track after she experienced some discomfort in her leg.

“I just felt something pop in my lead leg down toward my knee, and so I just like lost all power, and that’s why I took a tumble,” she told News.com.au’s Nine’s Wide World of Sports.

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Jenneke also represented Australia during the 2016 Rio Olympics, but she did not earn a medal. She became a viral sensation more than a decade ago for her pre-race dance routine at the 2012 World Junior Championships.

Michelle Jenneke falls at a hurdle during the Paris Olympics on Aug. 7, 2024. (Al Bello/Getty Images)

Jenneke’s availability for the repechage remains unclear. She posted a photo of a bandage around her knee on social media.

“Not feeling too bad but still waiting to see how my leg is,” she wrote in an Instagram Story post.

Michelle Jenneke knocks over a hurdle during the women’s 100m hurdles at Stade de France on Aug. 7, 2024. (Richard Heathcote/Getty Images)

“A little burn from the track but not too bad considering a pretty big tumble,” she wrote in another Instagram Story post.

The 31-year-old was named one of Team Australia’s captains for the Summer Games.

The “spirits are still high” for Jenneke, who also noted, “I know that there’s a good run in there, so we just got to see what we got.”

The women’s 100-meter hurdles final will take place on Aug. 11.

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PARIS — All eyes are on the round boxing ring, where dancers trade air flares instead of jabs under a bright spotlight. But the most influential person in the room stands in the shadows behind a turntable.

It’s where Stephen Fleg does his work.

More than a neutral referees but less than a dancer at center stage, DJs like him are the backbone of breaking competitions. The New York-based DJ, producer and B-boy is one of two DJs who will be at the controls of breaking’s Olympic debut at Place de la Concorde. DJ Fleg will split duties with Poland’s DJ Plash for the women’s competition Friday and the men’s event Saturday.

In an art form redefining Olympic sport, it’s no surprise that breaking is built on a unique relationship that doesn’t exist in other events.

“A referee is very much supposed to stay out of it, a judge is staying out of it, they’re completely separate from the event itself,” Fleg said. “What I’m doing is not. I have direct involvement.”

A B-boy of 25 years who deejayed his first event in 2005, Fleg is fully aware of the power he wields playing music for the dancers. He earned his spot by overseeing several Olympic qualifiers, including the final competition in Budapest in June. After the event, Zack Slusser, the vice president of Breaking for Gold USA and USA Dance, heard from first-time breaking spectators that it was the first sporting event they had attended in which no one was on their phone. Everyone was entrenched in the atmosphere Fleg created in.

“A referee is very much supposed to stay out of it, a judge is staying out of it, they’re completely separate from the event itself,” Fleg said. “What I’m doing is not. I have direct involvement.”

(Alan Chi – WDSF)

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“The DJ,” American B-boy Jeffrey “Jeffro” Louis said, “is everything.”

The best ones separate themselves by reading the room, understanding the dancers and then choosing the perfect songs that can take the room on an emotional journey, said B-girl Sunny Choi. There are aspects of a breaking battle that only some people experience, but everyone — judges, dancers and spectators — interacts with the music.

It should be funky, maintaining the essence of the art form that originated in the 1970s in the Bronx, while offering a mix of sounds. The drum break from which it derives its name name is key. The rhythm may be faster than some contemporary hip-hop, Fleg said, but some songs will be familiar to viewers tuning in to their first competition.

The International Olympic Committee licensed about 400 songs for the competition. They include vintage funk songs and 1990s and 2000s hip-hop. Some songs are brand new. Others will be comfortable classics for the breakers. Instead of the mechanical “pots and pans” sounds that DJs used for years to avoid copyright infringement issues during the early days of livestreamed events, viewers may recognize the sounds of James Brown, Busta Rhymes or A Tribe Called Quest.

But DJs don’t just pick good songs. Breakers have the opportunity to make songs stand out.

Jeffrey Louis works out with teammates during a breaking practice session at the Team USA training facility at the 2024 Summer Olympics July 30 in Eaubonne, France.

(David Goldman / Associated Press)

“Any song really has all these different notes, elements, instruments going on,” Slusser said. “The best dancers out there will highlight something that the audience probably isn’t hearing. … It’s totally interpretive and the best dancers are those that are able to capture those moments and also feed the audience exactly what that dancer is feeling.”

Dancers do not know which song they will get until it starts blaring over the speakers. Unlike gymnasts and figure skaters who practice their routines to set music for months before the Olympics, breakers have about five seconds to think of a plan before a round, Choi said.

Competitors are critiqued by a panel of nine judges who look for technique, vocabulary, originality, execution and musicality. The movements, from the high-flying power moves to intricate downrock movements on the floor, are a dancer’s vocabulary. They use them to write the sentences of each battle’s story.

The DJ, with his musical selection, chooses the plot.

“It’s a conversation between the breakers,” Slusser said. “But it’s a conversation contextualized by what the DJ does.”

Jeffro acknowledged DJs can control the result of a battle by giving a dancer a particularly difficult song. Fleg knows he can’t simply give his friends their favorite tracks. The IOC wanted to safeguard against potential bias by requiring DJs to present a set list of roughly three songs for each battle slot the day before the competition. They won’t know who will be dancing in each slot when they select the list. When the battle begins, DJs can choose only from their short list, selecting different sections, tinkering with transitions and looping in different effects.

American Sunny Choi, also known as B-Girl Sunny, competes in the B-girl Red Bull BC One World Final at Hammerstein Ballroom in 2022.

(Andres Kudacki / Associated Press)

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With the discipline determined to maintain its roots while teetering between art and sport, the set list compromise is one of the few formatted elements that won’t be exactly authentic to the culture.

“We’ve taken so many cultural wins with this,” Fleg said. “Being big-picture, it’s just like, we get to play funk music, we get to play these classic breaks, we play new things, all these things are great representations of how breaking has been perceived. … I understand that we kind of have to put this aside to be able to make this come through at this level at the Olympics.”

Fleg says he has always been a fan of the Games and recalled attending the 1996 Atlanta Olympics. Getting to elevate the art he’s cherished for decades onto this global stage is a coveted opportunity. While he stops short of calling breaking a sport, he feels that the top breakers are the same level of athletic and creative genius as the basketball player who turns off a screen to drain a long three-pointer.

In his role, he’s ready to spin the perfect assist.