{"id":671864,"date":"2026-05-15T04:37:10","date_gmt":"2026-05-15T04:37:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/671864\/"},"modified":"2026-05-15T04:37:10","modified_gmt":"2026-05-15T04:37:10","slug":"francis-ngannou-on-ufc-departure-that-was-the-moment-i-was-like-im-getting-out-of-this-contract","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/671864\/","title":{"rendered":"Francis Ngannou on UFC departure: “That was the moment I was like, \u2018I\u2019m getting out of this contract\u2019”"},"content":{"rendered":"

Francis Ngannou looks to show out at the MVP MMA<\/a> 1 card on May 16th, and the lineal MMA heavyweight champion took time to briefly touch on his UFC departure. Ngannou clashes with Philipe Lins this Saturday, with a global broadcast set for Netflix in the industry leader\u2019s inaugural foray into the MMA live event universe.<\/p>\n

During a pre-fight interview with Daniel Cormier on DC\u2019s personal YouTube channel, with a specific clip shared to the platform formerly known as Twitter by X user @FREAKMMA1<\/a>, \u2018The Predator\u2019 covered several subjects ahead of returning from his nearly two-year absence from mixed martial arts competition. When asked by the former two-division UFC champion if Ngannou\u2019s infamous UFC departure was just about money or if he felt disrespected by the promotion, Ngannou said,<\/p>\n

\u201cIt wasn\u2019t money. I think the mistake that the UFC did; we get to the point where I feel like they hit my ego. I felt like I wasn\u2019t respected at that point. I think that was the moment that I\u2019m like, \u2018Ok, I think I\u2019m getting out of this contract.\u2019 The thing is like, and this is something that really worries me. Something that I have that really worries me, when something touches my ego, I don\u2019t care about anything. At times I\u2019m like ok, I don\u2019t care if this is going to be the end of my career.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Francis Ngannou told UFC, \u201cit\u2019s gonna be my way\u201d but \u201cthey didn\u2019t understand\u201d<\/p>\n

As he kept expounding upon his road toward leaving the Ultimate Fighting Championship<\/a>, Francis Ngannou continued,<\/p>\n

\u201cIf this means I\u2019m going back to Africa to farm, at least I can buy some machine to farm. I\u2019m going to do something. I can do something else and still make it. I think my success is not about the sport. I think it\u2019s about my personality and how I can implement that in everything that I\u2019m going to do. So it\u2019s gonna be my way and I think that\u2019s what they didn\u2019t understand. They underestimate and they still kind of like come harder and harder, want to pressure me. I just wasn\u2019t the right guy to deal with that way.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Francis Ngannou looks to show out at the MVP MMA 1 card on May 16th, and the lineal…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":671865,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[570],"tags":[64,63,797,786,29825,785,324221,85,787],"class_list":["post-671864","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mma","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-daniel-cormier","tag-fighting","tag-francis-ngannou","tag-mma","tag-mvp-mma-1","tag-sports","tag-ufc"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/671864","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=671864"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/671864\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/671865"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=671864"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=671864"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=671864"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}