Francis Ngannou knows he\u2019s gone down a path most fighters wouldn\u2019t choose, especially considering how things have played out since 2023.<\/p>\n
Ngannou left the UFC in early 2023 after a lengthy contract dispute. Since then, he\u2019s fought once under the PFL banner and also made his long-awaited move into boxing.<\/p>\n
He\u2019s now getting ready to step back into MMA for the first time since October 2024, with a bout against Philipe Lins scheduled for May.<\/p>\n
The fight will be part of Netflix\u2019s first live MMA event, and Ngannou believes that many well-known fighters are missing out by not getting involved.<\/p>\n
Ngannou on why fighters should embrace free agency<\/p>\n
Francis Ngannou will be among several former UFC fighters competing at the Intuit Dome in Inglewood on May 16.<\/p>\n
Nate Diaz will take on Mike Perry, with Junior dos Santos and Muhammad Mokaev also set to appear. The main event features Ronda Rousey against Gina Carano.<\/p>\n
At a recent press conference in New York, Diaz referred to the card as being filled with \u201cfree\u201d fighters, a description Ngannou strongly agreed with.<\/p>\n
In an interview with ESPN, \u2018The Predator\u2019 expanded on his view that more fighters should consider free agency.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s always the opportunity,\u201d Ngannou said. \u201cI think you just have to be around and be free. Make sure you\u2019re in the position to catch that opportunity when it comes. If you get yourself stuck in a contract because you\u2019re afraid of being alone out there, when the opportunity comes, you might be stuck in some contract.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s what happened to a lot of fighters. They are just so scared of being free, being without promotion, without a promoter or something that they can do. They will sign up for everything just to be in the promotion and then the day that the opportunity, the real opportunity comes around they are not there.\u201d<\/p>\n
He added: \u201cThis fight this could have been an opportunity for so many people but they are all locked somewhere in contracts that they are not very happy about.\u201d<\/p>\n
Despite achieving several goals since leaving UFC such as breaking into boxing and signing with PFL he still faces criticism for his decision but remains focused on what lies ahead rather than looking back.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Francis Ngannou knows he\u2019s gone down a path most fighters wouldn\u2019t choose, especially considering how things have played…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":626284,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[570],"tags":[64,63,786,785,85],"class_list":["post-626283","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\/626283","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=626283"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/626283\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/626284"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=626283"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=626283"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=626283"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}