{"id":563528,"date":"2026-03-25T14:46:07","date_gmt":"2026-03-25T14:46:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/563528\/"},"modified":"2026-03-25T14:46:07","modified_gmt":"2026-03-25T14:46:07","slug":"disappointed-francis-ngannou-reacts-to-losing-rico-verhoeven-fight","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/563528\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Disappointed\u2019 Francis Ngannou reacts to losing Rico Verhoeven fight"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">Former UFC heavyweight champion, Francis Ngannou, was <a href=\"https:\/\/www.mmamania.com\/professional-fighters-league-pfl\/426759\/pfl-parts-ways-francis-ngannou-shifts-focus-recruiting-new-talent-2026\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">released by PFL<\/a> back in January.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">Ngannou, 39, didn\u2019t know it was announced until he read it online.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">\u201cWe parted ways in January,\u201d Ngannou (18-3) told <a href=\"https:\/\/sports.yahoo.com\/mma\/article\/francis-ngannou-opens-up-on-weird-pfl-split-jake-paul-feud-and-jon-jones-ufc-troubles-i-know-the-tactic-001250737.html\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Uncrowned<\/a>. \u201cI wanted to also give them a better way to come up with something, because that was their decision to part ways. Not mine. But I was a little surprised when they [made the announcement]. They should have at least told me since I was holding onto this. I found it a little weird that [PFL] didn\u2019t come back to me to be like, \u2018Okay, now we\u2019re going to announce it.\u2019 They didn\u2019t even tell me. I just saw it out there. I wasn\u2019t aware at all. At that point, I had been talking with Nakisa [Bidarian] for two or three weeks.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">\u201cMy word is my everything,\u201d Verhoeven told <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=ve3MOdvEWhQ\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Smash Cast<\/a>. \u201cFor me, that was the thing, like, I gave my word. There were multiple people that really put their necks out for me. So that\u2019s like Jason Statham, his excellency Turki Alalshikh, his right hand man Doctor Rakan [Al-Harty], and I was like this is what I got to do. The other option is amazing and they\u2019re paying an amazing amount of money but I gave these guys my word.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">\u201cNo disrespect to Philipe, but I was very excited about the Rico fight,\u201d Ngannou added. \u201cAnd then when I heard that he signed to fight Usyk, I was a little disappointed, to be honest. I know that since maybe December or even before, he had a verbal agreement to fight in boxing, to fight potentially Usyk or AJ, somebody. So I knew that even when Nakisa approached me, he said, \u2018This is the thing, Rico really likes this, but this is the position.\u2019 And he was always quite clear about it.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Former UFC heavyweight champion, Francis Ngannou, was released by PFL back in January. Ngannou, 39, didn\u2019t know it&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":563529,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[570],"tags":[64,63,786,40762,785,8081,250320,85],"class_list":["post-563528","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mma","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-fighting","tag-latest-ufc-mma-news","tag-mma","tag-professional-fighters-league-pfl","tag-ronda-rousey-vs-gina-carano-netflix-news-hub","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/563528","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=563528"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/563528\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/563529"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=563528"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=563528"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=563528"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}