Francis Ngannou may have fought two of the most famous heavyweight boxers in the world, but he no longer plans to fight for the title in the ring.
Ngannou, who switched from MMA to boxing last year with his fight against Tyson Fury, is scheduled to return to the sport he quit on October 19 when he faces PFL heavyweight champion Renan Ferreira. The Cameroonian fighter’s last ring appearance was a boxing match against Anthony Joshua last March in Saudi Arabia, when he lost in two rounds.
Although Ngannou (0-2) has had the privilege of facing two great heavyweights in boxing, he does not believe he is in a better position now to succeed in the sport.
“This was never my life goal,” Ngannou said on the podcast “The Diary of a CEO.” “I was aware of the situation. My first boxing match was less than a year ago and I was already 37. It’s not a moment in your life where you expect to have a career in a combat sport like boxing.”
Ngannou, known as “The Predator,” was an undisputed heavyweight champion when he took a break from MMA after parting ways with the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) in 2022. Ngannou’s departure from the UFC was due to contractual disagreements. He said the contract offered by the UFC at the time was one-sided and only benefited the fighting organization.
Instead, 37-year-old Ngannou signed a contract with the Professional Fighters League (PFL) that allowed him to fight in the boxing ring. According to him, this was the turning point in his career financially.
“I knew that from that moment on, for every fight that I was going to have, I was going to make more than I made in my entire MMA career. Because in my last few years in the UFC, I could have made more if I had taken the contract. So I basically left a lot of money on the table to have my freedom, I basically bought my freedom.
“Freedom, they say, is not given to you. You have to give something to get it. That’s why I earned less money back then because I turned down the contract.”
Ngannou, who began his MMA career in Paris in 2013, is convinced that he can still learn a lot about the sport in his upcoming fights before he finally calls it quits.
“I’ve only been doing MMA for 11 years and I think I still have a lot to learn, experiment and show in fights. I think I still have a lot to do and I still have the passion. I’m not very young anymore, but I still have a few years to do it. Because you have to remember that I’m retiring at 40 or 42.”
Bernard Neequaye is a sports journalist specializing in boxing coverage. He wrote a boxing column called “From The Ringside” for many years in his native Ghana. You can reach him on X (formerly Twitter) at @BernardNeequaye, on LinkedIn at Bernard Neequaye, and by email at [email protected].
