For everyone who thinks that Ngannou was wrong for not continuing to work with Dana the Abuser Junky, here is the list of requests he had during negotiations.
He asked for right of a sponsorship, he asked for health insurance, he asked for a fighter advocate in the board meeting.
He didn0't expect UFC to accept all requests but they didn't accept a single thing he proposed except they offered with much more money.
Listen to first special interview Ngannou made with Ariel Helwani:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0vngym7ChcMThe interview with Ariel is well worth a watch for those who want to hear Francis' side of the story. It seems like he's walking away from a very large amount of money. What he was asking for wasn't unreasonable but I don't think the UFC is willing to give fighters those things. It looks like they tried to get him on a huge fight deal probably similar to the 8-fight deal Jon Jones was on but then he wanted a three fight deal which Francis seemed to think he could get done in a year which was optimistic.
I've felt for a while that Francis not only wants to get paid what he thinks he deserves, but also wanted to make the move to boxing. I don't know if that's what he'll end up doing, but I got that impression from how he's been talking the last year or so. However, he's been a good sport in my opinion, hasn't spoken out too much about the situation despite there obviously something going on behind the scenes.
The podcast will be some insight just to have two sides of the story, but ultimately I don't like seeing Dana throw him under the bus, there may have been the possibility he came back after his adventures elsewhere.
Yeah, I didn't like how Dana tried to spin the narrative there. Ariel had some good comments on what Dana
should have said instead. Interestingly it doesn't look like Francis is opposed to re-joining the UFC but probably knows he won't ever get the terms he wants. Maybe if Dana ever leaves then there might be a shift in how the UFC is run. Francis said he is likely to box next and named Fury and AJ as people he would like to fight but those are unlikely to happen. Maybe Eddie Hearn should contact him about doing a co-promotion to get him into the boxing world. I just hope Francis has something already lined up behind the scenes - or nearly lined up - as he almost certainly isn't going to get what he the UFC offered him with another rival MMA promotion. He will get a huge payday against someone like Fury but like I said before Fury has a queue of people lining up to fight him and I'm not sure when they could squeeze that fight in. Maybe Francis should try box a couple of other people first before going for a megafight.