Quote from: Erumo on January 16, 2023, 12:20:43 PM

What a greedy man Francis Ngannou is. He is a living proof that if a person had poor and hungry childhood, he will think only about money. I cant believe he has left UFC even after they offered him highest payment in UFC history. Francis Ngannou only excuse was - he does not like the contract. He feels like he is a slave. He is a slave, but other are blind and dream to get into UFC. I dont believe that it is all about contract. If contract really was such a nightmare, everyone would reveal that long time ago.

I'd wait for Francis' side of the story before you make judgment and you also need to take Dana's comments with a pinch of salt as well because Dana is already seemingly trying to make the narrative about Francis being scared of fighting certain people which sounds like butthurt BS to me. Francis' coach has already come out and said Francis doesn't want to be a sell-out: https://www.instagram.com/p/CnfjW8XJuQL/

Looks like Francis himself might be going on Ariel's podcast today so hopefully we'll get his side of the story then, but when Dana said he offered Ngannou the highest heavyweight contract in history that might not mean much given how often they stiff the fighters and don't pay them what they're worth. He might have offered Francis a dollar more than the terrible pay he's previously offered superstar heavyweights and that would still technically be 'the highest pay'. He could have offered Francis a mere million or so dollars advance and you might think that's a lot but it's not when Francis can probably get that for a single sponsor on his shorts which you cannot do in the UFC so you have to take all this into consideration rather than being a slave to the UFC. What they probably did was offer Francis a large sum of money upfront for x amount of fights which will look a lot on paper but not anywhere near what he's worth. Dana mentioned he'd signed Jon Jones to an eight fight deal and I bet he tried to do the same with Francis but Francis probably isn't desperate for the money whereas Jon Jones probably is given he hasn't fought in ages and regularly gets himself into trouble so Jon will take what he can get and secure his future which is always perilous with him.

Quote from: TopTort777 on Today at 08:18:59 AM

Very controversy situation with Francis Ngannou. He is inactive for a year already. I hope he knows what he is doing. So far I havent heard he has signed different contract with anyone else. But I predict that promotions will now fight for him. UFC has made him famous. Now Francis is able to select an easy path - promotion with weaker heavyweight than UFC has, and sign a big contract with them. Beat few bags, grab billions and retire Grin

He's in a precarious place for sure. He can of course easily sign with any other MMA organisation but they probably won't pay him what he would have got with the UFC, though maybe one promotion might overpay for him and give him a massive bag to get the huge exposure and all eyes on them to take away some market share from the UFC so it might pay off that way. Hopefully he gets a mega crossover boxing even with someone like Fury which there was certainly talks behind the scenes about and Fury even posted something on his Instagram recently about it now Francis is a free agent. Making that fight is easier said than done though because everyone wants to fight Fury so he's in demand and will have a lot of mandatory challengers queuing up to fight him which he will have to take. I dare say there will likely be a Usyk rematch as well along with potential fights with AJ and Joe Joyce so it could be years before he's free.