Francis Ngannou Breaks Silence On BKFC And ONE Link-Ups, Lifts Lid On ‘Two-Faced’ Promoters

"The Predator" cleared the air once and for all.

Francis Ngannou
Francis Ngannou - Image credit @Francisngannou Instagram
  • Francis Ngannou opened up about his previous talks with BKFC and ONE Championship
  • “The Predator” is still hoping a boxing match and fight with Jon Jones would happen in the future

The Francis Ngannou saga has finally begun anew as he is now officially signed by PFL. In the wake of his big move, the former UFC heavyweight champion straightened out a few confusions about his link-ups with ONE Championship and BKFC.

BKFC was a joke

Speaking to The MMA Hour, Ngannou said he thinks BKFC president David Feldman “assumed” he was asking for too much in compensation but more importantly, the truth is he or nobody from his team talked business with the bare-knuckle boxing promotion.

“I just think he assumed that I’m so expensive,” Ngannou said of Feldman. “Obviously, because he had to take a loan on his house to put on a show. I think he assumed that loan couldn’t pay me because I never spoke to him. My team never spoke to him. And then when I saw his comments, I was like, ‘Where is this guy coming from?’ Then I checked my phone, I called my team, like, ‘Did somebody talk to this guy that I’m not aware of?’ And everyone checked his messages and they’re like, ‘No, we haven’t talked with this guy.’ So I don’t know where he came from. That’s why I didn’t talk about it. This guy is just a joke.”

As he looked back at it, “The Predator” concluded that Feldman was just promoting his company after all, which led to him reckoning some promoters in the sport were “two-faced.”

“At some point, he was promoting his show, his event. He gonna do anything to get a little bit of PR here and there, everything that he can do. But I never talked to that guy, we never asked him anything, and he never even reached out, not to say we were interested, we weren’t, but he never even reached out, so he didn’t know if yes or no, we were interested. That’s why I say like, some promoters out there, two-faced. Crazy stuff.”

ONE was all about show

As for ONE Championship, Ngannou revealed that the promotion’s CEO Chatri Sityodtong was after pulling off a show out of him. As it turned out, Ngannou had been honest with ONE about his move to PFL and he was just being respectful to Sityodtong so he decided to meet with him.

“Well, I think he’s just being Chatri… I think Chatri was just performing,” Ngannou assessed. “Before then, he knew, I had told him and Matt Hume that I got the best offer from PFL and I’m not going to do any negotiations with you guys. That was like back, six weeks before that. And he was like, ‘Oh, I can fly you to Singapore, I can fly to Cameroon! I got this!’ it was all in me. I was like, this is too much. I don’t know how to handle this. How are you going to fly to Cameroon? What for? I just told the guy the situation and then he kept pushing and then I sent it to my team, ‘Bro, I can’t handle this pressure from Chatri.’ Then he kept pushing, kept pushing and said yeah, I’m gonna be in LA and Francis is coming. So I have to see him, for respect. We had a talk, I respect the guy. I mean, matter of fact, I love Chatri. Before this, I was like, I like this guy, I like his story. Now I even question if that story is true. But I used to love that story.”

“So we met in L.A. and I was just upfront before anything started,” he added. “I was like, ‘Listen, this is the thing. I have told you this. I’m favoring PFL right now.’ And he was like, ‘Why did you get me here?’ I’m like, ‘To listen. First of all, I respect you. And even if I sign with PFL, someday comes that you say, ‘I want to meet you, Francis.’”

“I was like, OK, it’s good, I respect this guy, and I took this meeting, I don’t want to be rude… I have to drink three or four cups of coffee, listening to all those statistics, how ONE FC is in Asia, Asia is 4.6 billion people, they’re going to do this, they showed me how ONE FC is going to explode, I’m going to be like Nelson Mandela,” he continued. “Bro, it was a hell of a performance. By the way, I applaud Chatri for his performance… I didn’t have any engagement… I’m sitting on the table and told him that, ‘Ok, I’m going with this guy [PFL]. So, I have no reason to even ask him something.”

Ngannou said that his current deal with PFL is exclusively MMA but he is still gunning for his boxing debut before his debut with the promotion. On the other hand, “The Predator” is also hoping that someday, a cross-promotion fight with Jon Jones would finally materialize.

Published on May 17, 2023 at 1:15 pm
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