Francis Ngannou wasn’t blind to the UFC’s attempts to steal away the Tyson Fury superfight that ultimately landed in the lap of MMA’s lineal heavyweight champion.
Ngannou is set to face undefeated WBC champion Tyson Fury in a blockbuster boxing match on Oct. 28 in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. The chance to box Fury is one the former UFC heavyweight champion has long coveted — and also one of the major factors that led to his unprecedented departure from the promotion as champ this past January, as UFC officials refused to allow the Ngannou to chase a boxing payday while under contract.
But a funny thing happened last month after Ngannou signed a lucrative deal to resume his MMA career with PFL: UFC president Dana White suddenly became very interested in booking a fight between Fury and new UFC heavyweight champion Jon Jones.
Not just that, but White’s interest piqued not long after the UFC president criticized Ngannou’s push to fight a big-name boxer and stated that he doesn’t book “gimmick fights.”
In the eyes of Ngannou’s longtime representative Marquel Martin, White’s conflicting statements spoke volumes.
“I think for everyone that has been initiated within the UFC and kind of really understands it, it’s no surprise, right?” Martin said this week on The MMA Hour. “Dana is one of the best promoters that we’ve ever seen. I’ll always say that. So when we saw it, we just kind of [were] like, ‘Of course.’ Right? Of course you would say, on one end, it’s a gimmick fight. … And then on the other hand, it comes to where it’s like, ‘Oh no, we’ll put that on.’ So I’m sure that they wanted that fight.
“I think they really wanted to just mess up our chances, to be quite honest. I think, for whatever reason, there’s a sour taste in their mouth when it comes to Francis. And yeah, they don’t want Francis to be able to have that opportunity. Right? I think that was clear to us for a while. For what reason? I don’t know, you have to ask them. But it’s a moot point.”
The UFC has of course promoted plenty of matchups that could be considered gimmick fights throughout its history, from signing James Toney and CM Punk, to co-promoting the immensely lucrative Floyd Mayweather vs. Conor McGregor boxing bout in 2017 — the latter of which is a fight that remains one of the highest-selling pay-per-views of all-time.
For Martin, the way things ultimately played out is even more ironic because Ngannou spent two years trying to make the Fury fight happen under the UFC umbrella, he said.
Fury is promoted by Top Rank, a promotional arm which has a streaming deal with ESPN+, same as the UFC. Once chatter first picked up between Ngannou and Fury about a potential boxing showdown after Ngannou’s 2021 title win over Stipe Miocic, Martin said he spoke to UFC officials about plotting a course that led to two superfights — first against Jones for Ngannou’s UFC heavyweight title, then against Fury for the mantle of Baddest Man on the Planet. Martin said he and Ngannou were rebuffed at every turn, and he suspects the immense wealth McGregor earned from his Mayweather bout — and how that wealth has affected the rest of McGregor’s UFC career — played a part in the promotion’s thinking.
“After Stipe [Miocic], it was supposed to be Jon Jones, right?” Martin said. “I think I tweeted something long ago, somebody may be able to find it, but I literally wrote it down. I said, ‘Stipe, then we’re going to take care of Jon Jones, then we’re going to go for Tyson Fury.’ In that order. But they have their own plans and their own strategy, and for whatever reason, they just didn’t want to make it happen. I kind of feel like it was maybe the Conor McGregor effect. Like, Conor made so much money from that boxing fight, and maybe they didn’t want to do it again, so maybe they had some business reasons.
“So it’s hard to really pinpoint the exact reason. But I do know that, from our side, it would’ve been so easy and everyone would’ve been happy. We’d still probably be with the UFC today and they would be promoting this fight potentially, right?
“You have the king of the MMA division, Francis. No disrespect to Stipe, but we’d just beaten Stipe. So then if we were to beat, which I think Francis would have, knocked out Jon Jones, then what? You beat the heavyweight GOAT, then the GOAT of all GOATs. Then the next thing you do is, what? Go see who’s really the baddest man on the planet. But I don’t think they thought it that way. So no harm, no foul, but we’re going to prove it.”
For Martin, White’s words about not promoting “gimmick fights” are even more comical in retrospect because the UFC president immediately pivoted to pushing hard to host the potential battle between billionaires Mark Zuckerburg vs. Elon Musk shortly afterward.
“I used to spend a lot of time trying to unscramble the reasons of why they do things, and now I don’t spend too much time on it at all,” Martin said.
“I thought it was amazing to see that. Like, that is great. Maybe Zuckerberg and Elon Musk should come to [Ngannou’s new promotional arm] GIMIK Fight Promotions, maybe they could be on the co-main if they’re not able to get it done over there with the UFC. But I don’t know. If that’s not a gimmick fight, then I don’t know, what do you call it?”