{"id":625535,"date":"2026-04-23T10:50:09","date_gmt":"2026-04-23T10:50:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/625535\/"},"modified":"2026-04-23T10:50:09","modified_gmt":"2026-04-23T10:50:09","slug":"ngannou-names-jon-jones-as-ultimate-retirement-fight","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/625535\/","title":{"rendered":"Ngannou Names Jon Jones As Ultimate Retirement Fight"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/admin.boxingnews.com\/tag\/francis-ngannou\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Francis Ngannou<\/a> confessed that despite his successful transition to boxing and his upcoming return to the cage, a clash with <a href=\"https:\/\/admin.boxingnews.com\/tag\/jon-jones\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Jon Jones<\/a> remains his goal.<\/p>\n<p>Ngannou reflected on the contractual gridlock that prevented the fight in 2023, accusing the UFC of using the \u201cJones fight\u201d for their own agenda. Ngannou\u2019s recent comments shed new light on the final months of his UFC tenure, which ended in early 2023. Ngannou believes the UFC never intended to make the fight.<\/p>\n<p>Ngannou also recently took to social media to support Jones in his own public fallout with Dana White, stating that Jones deserves a $30M+ payday and his \u201cfreedom\u201d from the promotion. Francis is currently in the final stages of camp for a five-round heavyweight bout against Philipe Lins. The fight serves as the co-main event for the Ronda Rousey vs. Gina Carano Netflix special at the Intuit Dome.<\/p>\n<p>Jones Reacts<\/p>\n<p>Jones remains \u201cretired\u201d on paper but is actively seeking his UFC release. The relationship between Jones and CEO Dana White soured this March after White claimed Jones was \u201cfinished\u201d due to hip arthritis\u2014a claim Jones vehemently denied while exposing \u201clowball\u201d offers for the UFC Freedom 250 card.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cJon Jones is the fight that I really want to have before my retirement. But other than that, it could be anybody, I don\u2019t care. As long as it\u2019s a fight. I\u2019m not saying it\u2019s a fight that would define my career or something, but if I had to pick, okay let\u2019s do this one and go home, then it would be Jon Jones. Disappoint me? No. It was never really on the table, so I don\u2019t have to be disappointed. The only time that he seems like a possibility was when he was used as bait, something to bait me,\u201d Ngannou <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bjpenn.com\/mma-news\/francis-ngannou\/francis-ngannou-admits-he-still-really-wants-jon-jones-fight-before-his-career-is-over\/?utm_source=rss&amp;utm_medium=rss&amp;utm_campaign=francis-ngannou-admits-he-still-really-wants-jon-jones-fight-before-his-career-is-over\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer nofollow\">said\u00a0<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Find all the\u00a0latest\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/admin.boxingnews.com\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">boxing news<\/a>\u00a0and MMA breaking updates on\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.boxingblitz.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener nofollow\">boxingnews.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Francis Ngannou confessed that despite his successful transition to boxing and his upcoming return to the cage, a&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":625536,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[570],"tags":[64,63,786,785,85],"class_list":["post-625535","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mma","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-fighting","tag-mma","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/625535","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=625535"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/625535\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/625536"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=625535"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=625535"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=625535"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}