Francis Ngannou has said that UFC President, Dana White, is the only person in the way of a fight with ufc heavyweight champion, Jon Jones, adding that he would still retire happy even if the fight does not happen. Talks of a fight between Ngannou and Jones have been floating around for years now without any headway in sight. According to the Cameroonian, it is all White’s fault.
He said: “If you can get past Dana White, it could happen, [but] that’s a massive obstacle.” The former ufc heavyweight champion also added that he was offered the fight at some point, but that was when he was about to leave the UFC and it felt like a “bait”: “I’ve been trying to fight Jon Jones and then they were holding it out like a trap until the moment that I was about to leave and then they said, ‘OK, here’s the Jon Jones fight.’ But it was bait. I felt they were very tricky.”
The Cameroonian made it clear that as much as he wanted the fight, it would not cause him to lose sleep if it never happened: “But personally I don’t care. I’m doing well. I’m doing my stuff at my pace. I don’t care. That won’t change my sleep for me.”
Ngannou’s position is not new, neither is his beef with White. His departure from the UFC was not exactly mutual and it would be fair to say that White still has some bad blood for him, which is why getting approval for such a fight is almost impossible.
Since leaving the UFC, Ngannou, who is now with the PFL, has been involved in two boxing matches, which both resulted in losses, but gave him his biggest payout after years with the UFC.
On what’s next for him, Ngannou is still eager to return to boxing and has his sights set on former WBC heavyweight champion, Deontay Wilder. For him, the fight will settle the question of who can hit harder between him and Wilder.
