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Yeah, I was never a big fan of Stipe either, for a lot of the same reasons you list. Always thought his striking, and especially boxing, was overrated and his win streak seemed kinda fluky. I'm just holding off on the Francis hype a little bit, eventhough I've made threads about how impressive his improvements has been. I still think we need to see more from his to be sure. I also don't like how overconfident he has been since the Overeem fight.
When you look at Stipe's technique there's nothing special, but it's the way he uses his skills that's key to his success. What Stipe's really good at is finding ways to force mistakes from his opponents and then capitalizing on them to get the win. He knew that JDS always leaves his hands down when trying to escape the fence, so he pressured JDS to the fence, hit him when his hands were down and then followed up with a finish. Werdum always leaves his chin in the air when he runs in with combos and that's how Stipe got him. Werdum always wants to "get it back" whenever he gets hit, Stipe used his speed advantage to hit him early and make him mad, and when Werdum started rushing in with punches he went back to fighting on the counter and clocked him. As for Overeem, he always shells up or makes bonehead mistakes when he's under sustained pressure and that's what Stipe did to him. He stayed in his face, gave him no chance to reset, and when Reem fucked up he got him outta there. There's nothing fluky about what he does.
As for Ngannou, I think it's his ability to make reads and use them to get ahead of his opponents and walk them into the finish that's his best skill. In his last couple fights he was really good at getting his opponent's distance & timing down, then noting what their responses were to various probes and using that to setup the finish. If you show him the same response twice, you are fucked. I wrote a longer post on how he setup & killed Overeem, and getting the read was how he wrecked Arlovski as well. There was a sequence about 30 seconds before the KO where Arlovski runs forward with a punch combo and leaves his chin open, Ngannou retreated a few steps and almost connected with a counter right hand. When he saw Arlovski go to his punch combo again, Ngannou stood his ground and hit him with a counter left hook, he knew Andrei's head would be unprotected and there to be hit if he timed his counter properly.
I think this fight is going to come down to who screws up first. Stipe's best bet will be to use his Mark Hunt game plan, use lots of feints & different patterns and timing to keep Ngannou's finger off the trigger and prevent him from getting a good read. For Ngannou, patience & composure. If he misses a few shots early that's fine, just stay patient and keep working the reads, sooner or later he'll find something that works as long as he doesn't gas out or take too much damage.