Francis Ngannou\u2019s head coach hopes the fighter and UFC CEO Dana White hash things out.<\/p>\n
The relationship between Ngannou and White has continued to go further and further south following Ngannou\u2019s decision to part ways with the UFC in 2023, vacate the heavyweight title, and sign with PFL. Recently, White shared a story of an altercation from a few years back where things nearly got physical between them.<\/p>\n
Xtreme Couture coach Eric Nicksick was asked for his reaction to the occasional back-and-forth between his fighter and White.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think that my relationship with certain individuals are different than the relationship with other people,\u201d Nicksick told MMA Fighting. \u201cI know what Francis brings to me and my family, and the way that he treats me, and that\u2019s the way I judge him by his character. Same with Dana. Dana\u2019s been nothing but nice and great to me. I wish that somewhere down the line that these two could mend those fences, just on a personal level. I\u2019d rather have friends than enemies, and at the end of the day, I hope that these guys can reconcile and put away their differences.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut when I look at it, too, it\u2019s almost like, just let him continue to live his life. We don\u2019t need to continue to talk about this shit. This, whatever happened, was probably almost seven, eight years ago. Why are we bringing up old shit like that, you know? And I think it\u2019s just, in a lot of ways, it\u2019s, I don\u2019t know\u2014This is my personal opinion: I feel like deep down, Dana does like Francis, and I think that he does miss the fact that they would like to have him on that roster because of where the heavyweight division is at now in the landscape of it. Hopefully, at some point, those two can sit down man to man and just let all this shit go. Like, why do you want to carry that energy, you know what I mean? \u2026<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s like, f*ck, I don\u2019t want to carry that energy every day. So hopefully they can reconcile and just let that shit go. Even if Francis never fights in the UFC ever again, like just move on.\u201d<\/p>\n
As far as what\u2019s next for Ngannou, it certainly doesn\u2019t appear\u2014at least, at the moment\u2014that he\u2019s heading back to the UFC anytime soon if ever again. Ngannou is still under contract with PFL, with promotional executive John Martin recently telling MMA Fighting they had something \u201cspecial\u201d planned for the promotion\u2019s biggest free-agent signing ever.<\/p>\n
Nicksick said he recently spoke to Ngannou on a video call and was blown away with what he saw.<\/p>\n
\u201cYeah, I mean we talk all the time and he was out in Dubai, he\u2019s back in Cameroon, he\u2019s coming back to Vegas here soon,\u201d Nicksick said. \u201cFrancis always holds his cards close to the chest and I just know Francis. He\u2019s a guy that he\u2019s going to call me up on a Sunday and say, \u2018Hey, we\u2019re fighting Friday.\u2019 It\u2019s one of those things with him.We talked recently and that\u2019s basically what he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe goes, \u2018Hey, Bubba, I want to come back and get back into MMA.\u2019 I told him, \u2018We need to get back before a fight is booked and start getting your body to where we\u2019re comfortable,\u2019 and he\u2019s actually in really, really good shape. He\u2019s the lightest I\u2019ve ever seen him. He called and FaceTimed, I saw his face right away and it was like chiseled. Usually, he\u2019s like a little bit more plump and he\u2019s been eating and stuff like that, but his knee is feeling good, so he\u2019s getting his roadwork. He\u2019s training every day and his weight was down.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was like, \u2018Yo, we got something coming up.\u2019 And he goes, \u2018Yeah, I\u2019m working on a few things.\u2019 So hopefully, we see him back in the cage in 2026. And then the sky\u2019s the limit for him, man.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ngannou has only competed for PFL one time since signing with the promotion, destroying Renan Ferreira in quick fashion at PFL Battle of the Giants in October 2024.<\/p>\n
It appears Ngannou could have a future date with PFL heavyweight champ Vadim Nemkov, but if it were up to Nicksick, he\u2019d love to see \u201cThe Predator\u201d back in the octagon.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe can do whatever the hell he wants to do I think, on a personal level, I\u2019d love to be able to see him compete in the UFC just because of the level of competition that he would go against,\u201d Nicksick said. \u201cBut if he fights Nemkov, shit, he looked great in his last fight, too. So he\u2019s a guy that we\u2019ve got to take serious. So whatever opponent rises, we\u2019ll be ready for.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Francis Ngannou\u2019s head coach hopes the fighter and UFC CEO Dana White hash things out. The relationship between…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":404800,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[444],"tags":[49,48,641,701,638,1863,8417,82,640,702,3194],"class_list":["post-404799","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mma","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-fighting","tag-latest-news","tag-mma","tag-pfl","tag-pfl-news","tag-sports","tag-ufc","tag-ufc-news","tag-videos"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/404799","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=404799"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/404799\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/404800"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=404799"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=404799"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=404799"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}