MMA heavyweight icon Francis Ngannou recently made a statement warning athletes who place too much trust in the organizations that are promoting them. His comments carry weight considering his well-documented contract disputes with the UFC before ultimately leaving the company.
Ngannou explained that many athletes enter MMA without fully understanding the business side of the sport.
“MMA is not that new but it’s a new sport that a lot of figh ters get there and then they don’t know what to do,” Ngannou said. “But they have to understand that they are on their own. They have to look out for themselves. They have to do their best.”
He continued, “They don’t have to rely only on promotion or whomever is next to them telling them that they’re going to do everything for them because at the end of the day everyone in the business cares for himself first before you.”
The former UFC heavyweight champion doubled down on that point by warning athletes about what can happen when a promotion’s interests clash with their own.
“Most of the time you are just a collateral,” he said. “And if that means they’re going to sacrifice you for their interest there will not be a hesitation. So they should keep that in mind and then make sure that they manage their business properly and then protect themselves.”
Ngannou also spoke about what he believes is a larger issue within the sport: the amount of influence powerful organizations have over media narratives and athlete perception.
“Don’t let people fool you, feed you all this cr*p,” Ngannou said. “They have a lot of cr*p nowadays and they control a lot of things, a lot of medias, they control everything. So basically athletes being powerless, they basically rely on them and trust, even happen to trust them sometimes, which could be good but most of the time it’s not good.”
The comments resonate strongly coming from Ngannou, who spent years as one of the UFC’s biggest stars before choosing to leave in pursuit of better opportunities and greater freedom over his career.
