Francis Ngannou left Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) on a real sour note, but now the former UFC heavyweight king has ultimate bragging rights over Dana White after scoring a lucrative boxing match against world champion Tyson Fury.
Ngannou and White have not seen eye-to-eye in quite some time and it led to “Predator’s” UFC release this past January. After multiple attempts to land the contract he wanted and stay with the promotion, Ngannou bet on himself and was more than happy to leave UFC in the rearview.
After receiving considerable backlash and doubt regarding his decision to leave, Ngannou scored a big-time deal with Professional Fighters League (PFL) two months ago. The contract allows Ngannou to compete in boxing — which UFC was never going to do — and it led to his recent bout agreement with Fury.
Ngannou continues to surprise people around the combat community with the way he has handled his free agency cash grab and the former UFC champion is happy to prove White wrong along the way.
“For some reason, I always prove Dana White wrong — even when he’s on my side,” Ngannou told SiriusXM. “I always prove him wrong, every single time. This is just our story.”
Despite UFC’s unwillingness to back Ngannou in a boxing superfight against Fury they have been active in trying to set up a meeting between “Gypsy King” and current UFC heavyweight champion Jon Jones. It’s exactly the same thing Ngannou was asking for, but UFC didn’t want to play ball. Now that the promotion is trying to wiggle its way into doing business with Fury it makes Ngannou look like a real winner.
“They were ready to do Jon Jones and Tyson Fury in MMA — why couldn’t they do Ngannou and Fury in boxing? I don’t know,” Ngannou said. “I think [he] did that to try to take the fight away from me, and Dana did sent out a contract [for the Jones fight]. He sent out the contract, which I think was very embarrassing because that contract was rejected, and he signed mine for the GIMIK Fight Promotions.”
All in all, Ngannou has done what he has set out to do. He may have received serious criticism for thinking the grass is greener on the other side, but he’s about to have $8 million reasons why he made the right choice.
“It’s not a secret that so many people wanted me to fail,” Ngannou said. “They don’t want me to succeed, it’s not a secret, it’s quite obvious, and you all know about it.”
This story originally appeared on MMA Mania
