Former UFC heavyweight champion Francis Ngannou was much closer to resigning with the UFC than we have been lead to believe, at least according to Ngannou’s manager, Marquel Martin. Martin appeared on a recent episode of The MMA Hour to discuss Ngannou’s recent signing with PFL and how the UFC lost their champion.
First of all, Martin disputed the notion that Ngannou didn’t want to fight. “It was beyond frustrating.
Francis Ngannou’s Manager Accuses UFC
Francis, we were trying to get so many fights, people have no idea. He should have been done with his contract two years ago, easily. And we could have re-signed, we could have done whatever.
It was always, ‘Hey, this is happening and this is happening.’ One could say he was just getting stalled out, right? After the Rozenstruik fight, we were waiting around forever and we didn’t want to wait on Stipe [Miocic].
I think something was going on with [Daniel Cormier] and Stipe, we didn’t want to wait, we were like, ‘We’ll take another fight. No problem. We’ll take another fight.’
So when people say Francis didn’t want to fight or blah, blah, blah, it’s just not true. So I stopped arguing with the Twitter trolls and stuff. It’s just, I’ve got so many damn receipts I’m not even going to share them. And UFC knows that. They know that we were actively trying to fight all the time. All the time.”
Martin also reiterated that Ngannou’s contract negotiations were about far more than just money. “I thought it got very close. I wasn’t a part of the conversations in the fourth quarter, if you will, and you can probably guess why, but in my conversations post those dinners, there was a real chance that he was going to sign. But it had to be under the right terms. People are saying, ‘It’s all about money.’
Chill. To keep it 100, as they say, this dude got offered the biggest contract outside of Conor [McGregor] before the interim fight with Ciryl and that, and he said no because it wasn’t about just money.
Obviously, money plays a factor, but it was other things that were important to Francis, and who am I to tell this dude no? Who am I to say, ‘Nah, do this deal.’ That’s not the kind of person I am, that’s not the kind of manager I want to be, that’s not the kind of business I want to do, and Francis at the end of the day makes up his own mind.
But I would say that he was very close. I would say that I wish things were different. I think there was a lot of miscommunication in the back and forth in getting all these people involved. At the end of the day, I still think everyone won.”
