UFC heavyweight champion Francis Ngannou has a bone to pick with the UFC.
Over the past few years, champion Francis Ngannou has not seen eye-to-eye with the UFC brass. It seems that since winning his title, Ngannou has grown increasingly unhappy with the UFC. Now he is taking to social media to spread his concerns over money and how the fighters are getting paid. Fighter pay has been a hot bottom issue lately and Ngannou seems to always be at the forefront of these kinds of conversations.
Ngannou has been vocal about wanting more money for fighting. He has mentioned on numerous occasions that he does not think he is getting paid enough and has been seeking an opportunity to pursue boxing as a means to make more. Due to his UFC contract, Ngannou cannot just go box someone, he must fight only in the UFC at this time, or be given special permission to leave. That permission will not happen anytime soon, and so the more unhappy Ngannou begins to grow. Another fighter who has been on the fighter pay soapbox is Luke Rockhold.
Francis Ngannou was inspired by the comments made by Luke Rockhold about fighter treatment
Rockhold spoke during the UFC 278 media day about the payment problems and urged fighters to stand up for themselves. This speech struck a chord with Ngannou, who released a series of Tweets about money on Wednesday.
Listening to Luke's interview was very pertinent.
A lot of things that nobody is talking about it and the company just rolls with it.— Francis Ngannou (@francis_ngannou) August 17, 2022
Fighters are ripped off with Sponsorship. It’s a huge source of revenue for us but the company keeps exploiting that for their own benefit.
— Francis Ngannou (@francis_ngannou) August 17, 2022
The UFC brought in a series of sponsorships for fighters and in doing so eliminated any outside sponsorships the fighters may display during fights. This brought on problems with fighters losing sponsorships and in turn, losing money. The biggest issue Ngannou has is with the UFC’s deal with Crypto.com. When that sponsor was brought in it seemed as though the fighters would not get any of the reported $175 million dividends, but later were set up with a fan voting system to dish out the payments. This deal hurt Ngannou big time when he lost a cryptocurrency deal of his own.
Last year I lost a deal of over a million dollars from a crypto exchange because the partnership with CRYPTO .COM
What do I got from it ? 🤔— Francis Ngannou (@francis_ngannou) August 17, 2022
“Last year I lost a deal of over a million dollars from a crypto exchange because the partnership with CRYPTO .COM. What do I got from it?” He wrote.
Ngannou’s contract with the UFC is set to end at the end of this year, and at that time he seems to be determined to leave unless he gets paid what he is asking for. UFC Dana White has mentioned before that he remains positive that the UFC can get the deal done to keep the heavyweight champ. Ngannou is currently healing up from an injury and is rumored to be aiming for a return at the end of the year.
