Francis Ngannou has been nothing short of a gentleman during his free agency. The Cameroonian has had nothing but praise for the promotions that have approached him including the UFC.
When it was announced he had become a free agent, Ngannou said of the UFC:
“It is a very controversial situation, but I chose having good relationship with everyone in the UFC”
He later added: “They treated me good. Been nice with me and I wanna say Thank you to them. ”
Conor McGregor wasn’t enthused by Ngannou’s move at the time and went on to characterize it as a mistake but the two were recently reunited against a common enemy it seems.
Earlier this week, ONE FC CEO Chatri Sityadong declared they wouldn’t be giving Francis Ngannou a final offer and went so far as to claim they had principal issues.
ONE CEO Chatri Sidyodtong: “I met with Francis for almost three hours. I didn’t feel Francis and I were fully aligned on non-financial matters”
MMA Hour’s Ariel Helwani then contacted Ngannou to get his side of the deal – which was drastically different.
“Francis is very close to signing a new deal with another promotion. According to Francis, he was very upfront about this. They [Ngannou and Chatri Sityodtong of ONE] left the meeting on good terms, but both of them came to an understanding that because he had already verbally committed to someone, it’s more than likely he’s not going to ONE… I thought it was really interesting when I asked him [Ngannou] about PFL, that was the one that really got him fired up.”
ONE CEO Chatri Sidyodtong would go on to try and reclaim the narrative telling Dailystar:
“He was asking for a seat at the board of directors, he was asking for him to determine his opponent’s pay,” he revealed.
“We offered him £16million ($20million) guaranteed, the money wasn’t enough, he wanted all of these other non-financial terms that didn’t make a lot of sense.”
“We obviously can’t give a seat at the board of directors, that doesn’t make any sense, he would be a fish out of water [in that position].”
Ngannou had a diplomatic response to the drama.
At this point, McGregor got involved again. He’s no fan of Sidyodtong because he was previously used to market ONE FC as well.
In a true McGregor fashion he deleted the tweet some time later. McGregor and Sidyodtong had several run ins in the past. Notably, Sidyodtong attracted world wide attention claiming he would never sign McGregor at the height of his fame in 2017.
“If Conor McGregor was a free agent, ONE Championship would not try to sign him,” Sityodtong told CNN.
“We don’t want somebody to swear at people, throw water bottles, disrespect people, call out people’s wives and children, and – in my opinion – other distasteful stuff that is not representative of true martial arts.”