Nate Diaz may be welcomed back into UFC after his big money boxing bout against Jake Paul; however, don’t expect the same welcome mat to be rolled out to Francis Ngannou.
Ngannou left UFC on pretty bad terms, complaining that the standard contract fighters are forced to sign left them with no power. Now, he’s on the lookout for a big payday in boxing against a Tyson Fury or Deontay Wilder type. Could he return to UFC after that diversion, though?
Not according to UFC President, Dana White.
“We worked with this guy for two years, we tried to get him a fight,” White said on the Pat McAfee Show. “He’s absolutely impossible to deal with. No, he’ll never be in the UFC again.
“He made his decision,” White continued. “We worked hard, man. One of my guys, Hunter Campbell, who works for me, must have done 75 dinners with his guy trying to get him on board. We offered him a lot of money, showed him nothing but respect. We wanted to keep him, and that ship has sailed.”
For his part, Ngannou says he offered to sign a one-fight deal to compete against Jon Jones, but that offer was turned down. In the end, it might not be about one side or the other being impossible to deal with, but both sides having positions they refuse to budge on. UFC isn’t going to change any of the boilerplate text in its notoriously restrictive contracts. And Ngannou wasn’t about to sign one of those again after getting abused under his previous deal.
The big question now is whether Ngannou ends up securing a bag outside UFC or if he’s burned the biggest bridge in combat sports for nothing. “Super” fight talk against top boxers has dried up over the past month, with Deontay Wilder being the last name bandied about back in March.
Ngannou doesn’t seem to be in much of a rush, though. A recent video from his Instagram shows “The Predator” patiently working on his boxing fundamentals.
Perhaps now he just needs to work on “realistic” contract options.
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