To many, Ciryl Gane‘s first UFC main event wasn’t exactly a smashing success. Yes, the rising French heavyweight star was completely dominant against top-five opponent Jairzinho Rozenstruik, winning all five rounds with seemingly minimal effort. Gane outstruck Rozenstruik nearly three-to-one, showing off his uncommon speed and technical proficiency as he perfectly managed the distance and scored over and over again with jabs and low kicks.

Gane was barely breathing hard at the end of the 25 minutes, and at that pace, he probably could have gone another 10 rounds before he started to gas. Still, the fight didn’t pop – fands who were hoping for a career-defining highlight to upstage Gane’s December KO of former champion Junior dos Santos were instead treated to Gane circling around and chipping away at a stationary Rozenstruik for 25 minutes.

Even UFC president Dana White, someone who’s genuinely awful at promoting his stars and a master of trashing his own fighters, said after the fight, “He won, let’s just leave it at that. He won.” But put the blame where it’s due: Rozenstruik never pushed the issue, never tried to turn anything on and never tried to change the equation of the fight. Gane, who was easily dominating the fight where it was, had zero incentive to alter what he was doing because Rozenstruik never gave him one. Why is the onus on the fighter who’s winning to make the fight entertaining, not the fighter who’s getting owned?

The progression of the Gane-Rozenstruik fight, and the reactions to it afterward, will unfairly sour some fans on Gane. Yes, he won, but in their minds he didn’t live up to the huge hype that was placed on him in the weeks and months leading up to his first UFC main event – he’s just another boring point fighter who won’t give us the violence our lizard brains crave. His first main event was a success in his record book, but it wouldn’t shock me if we had to wait a while for him to get a second.

All of that is bullshit. On Saturday, Gane displayed all the tools that make him one of the most brilliant heavyweight talents to come around in the last decade, one who has rocketed from obscurity to title contention with unbelievable speed. Gane debuted as a mixed martial artist in Aug. 2018. Four fights into his pro career he was finishing fights in the UFC. Seven fights into his pro career he was knocking out former world champions. At just 8-0, with less than three years’ experience as a professional mixed martial artist, Ciryl Gane is already one of the world’s elite.

The quickness of Gane’s rise is appropriate given his amazing speed in the cage. The last UFC heavyweight who rocketed to the top this fast was Brock Lesnar, who was winning world titles just over a year into his pro career, but Lesnar was a freakish, mold-breaking athlete afforded uncommon opportunities because of his past stardom in WWE.

Gane doesn’t have that in his back pocket. Being a French national Muay Thai champion is great, but it doesn’t exactly afford you the same spotlight as having main-evented WrestleMania. He’s here right now because he’s so damn good that everyone recognized it right away. Him and Lesnar do have one thing in common, however: amazing physical traits. At 6-foot-5, 247 pounds, Gane is built like an NFL defensive end but moves like a wide receiver. I don’t think there’s a single heavyweight in the world who moves as well as he does. In a division filled with big, plodding hippos, he’s a gazelle.

Gane dominating a top contender like Rozenstruik, a huge knockout threat in his prime, proves that he’s already arrived as an elite heavyweight. He’s added to a list of ready or near-ready title contenders in the upper weight class, one that’s getting backed up at the top. Having too many top contenders is a problem, but it’s a good problem to have: just look at welterweight, where the dominance of Kamaru Usman and a lack of movement within the top 5 has led to a wasteland of competition. Whoever comes away with the heavyweight strap in next month’s Stipe Miocic–Francis Ngannou title bout is going to have a line out the door.

Miocic locked down the title of Greatest Heavyweight in UFC History by prevailing in his trilogy with Daniel Cormier last year, but his second title reign has moved glacially slow. Miocic hasn’t faced anyone not named Cormier in over three calendar years. Ngannou has been on an outright path of destruction since his loss to Derrick Lewis in June 2018, but he’s had to wait a ridiculously long time to get a rematch with Miocic. The fight is finally happening, and it’s about time, because we’ve got some guys who need opportunities.

Longtime light heavyweight champion Jon Jones, arguably the greatest mixed martial artist who ever lived, is now at heavyweight and is expected to get an immediate chance at the winner of Miocic-Ngannou 2. In the meantime, Gane has arrived as a top contender, although he’s likely one win away from claiming a chance. Alexander Volkov has come into his own as a terrifying knockout threat. Derrick Lewis just can’t stop knocking out top fighters. And there’s still Curtis Blaydes, who somehow has never received a chance at heavyweight gold, licking his wounds from the Lewis uppercut that turned his lights out last month but who will assuredly be right back in the thick of things very soon.

The immediate direction of the heavyweight title is set: Miocic-Ngannou, and then the winner defending against Jones. But it seems likely that parallel to that storyline, we’ll have two or maybe even three heavyweights emerge from 2021 with legitimate claims for a shot at the belt. It’s only gotten this way because it took so long for the Miocic-Cormier rivalry to play out, and it may look like a little bit of a mess. But it’s going to be one fine mess to watch.