Francis Ngannou: ‘I’m not in a better position to be a boxing champ’

Francis Ngannou may have fought two of the biggest-name heavyweight boxers in the world, but he no longer has plans of chasing a title in the ring.

Ngannou, who made his transition from MMA to boxing when he fought Tyson Fury last year, is scheduled to return to the sport he left when he comes up against PFL heavyweight champ Renan Ferreira on Oct. 19. The Cameroonian fighter’s last ring outing was a boxing fight against Anthony Joshua in Saudi Arabia last March, when he lost in two rounds.

Despite having the privilege of facing two great heavyweights in boxing, Ngannou (0-2) does not believe he is now in a better position to excel in the sport.

“It has never been a goal in my life,” Ngannou said on “The Diary of a CEO” podcast. “I was aware of the situation. My first fight in boxing was less than a year ago and I was already 37. It’s not a moment in your life that you’re expecting to have a career in a combat sport like boxing.”

Known as “The Predator,” Ngannou was an undisputed heavyweight champion when he took a hiatus from MMA after parting ways with the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) in 2022. Ngannou’s UFC departure was due to contractual disagreements. He said the contract being offered by the UFC at the time was one-sided and only benefited the fighting body.

Instead, Ngannou, 37, signed a contract with the Professional Fighters League (PFL), allowing him to fight in the boxing ring. According to him, that was the turning point in his career financially.

“I knew that from that moment every fight that I will make, I will be paid more than I’ve been making in my entire MMA career. Because in my last years in the UFC, I could’ve been making more if I’d accepted the contract. So, I basically left a lot of money on the table to have my freedom, I bought my freedom basically.

“Freedom, they say, is not given, it is not free. You’ve to give something in order to get that. So that’s why at that point I made less money because I turned down that contract.”

Ngannou, who started his MMA journey in Paris in 2013, believes there is a lot to learn in the sport in his upcoming fights before finally calling it quits.

“I have been doing MMA for just 11 years and I think I still have a lot to learn, to experiment and to show in fights. I think I still have a lot and I still have the passion. I’m not very young, but I still have a couple of years in front of me to be doing it. Because you’ve got to remember that after I’m 40 or 42, I’m retiring.” 

Bernard Neequaye is a sports journalist with a specialty in boxing coverage. He wrote a boxing column titled “From The Ringside” back in his native Ghana for years. He can be reached on X (formerly Twitter) at @BernardNeequaye, LinkedIn at Bernard Neequaye and through email at [email protected].