Dana White has claimed Francis Ngannou's switch to the PFL after leaving the UFC doesn't "make sense".
Former UFC heavyweight champion Ngannou decided to leave the promotion after failing to agree a new deal as he left in pursuit of potential fights in the boxing ring. However he wanted to continue to fight in the cage alongside any new career in the squared circle, and signed a lucrative new deal with MMA promotion PFL.
It is expected that he will continue to look for his first opportunity in boxing before making his PFL debut which is set to take place next year. But UFC president White believes there is less money in his future options than he thinks, given he may no longer achieve his ambition of fighting a leading boxing heavyweight.
“PFL is going to pay this guy to train for a boxing match that may not even happen and that they might not even be involved in. How does that make any sense?” White said. “It doesn’t make sense to me. Anthony Joshua called it a gimmick fight this week. When asked about that fight, he’s like, ‘I’m focused on fighting the best guys in the world. I’m not interested in a gimmick fight right now.’
“Francis could’ve done a deal here. Hunter [Campbell] threw the kitchen sink at that guy. Hunter went to more dinners with Francis Ngannou and did everything in his power to try to get this fight done, and Francis just thinks that he’s in a position where he’s got some Conor McGregor, Floyd Mayweather fight on his hands which he does not.
"That fight was a once-in-a-lifetime type deal — a fight that I wasn’t very interested in, but at the end of the day it became so big, the right guys, the right time, the right place, the fans wanted it, so we did it and we got it done. MMA guys versus boxers doesn’t make any sense to me, but I know that he thinks there’s all this money in it. I disagree.”
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Ngannou will now face an anxious wait with his intentions to first have a tune-up fight in the boxing ring before his PFL debut, where he is yet to receive an indication of a potential opponent. A fight with Jon Jones, which seemed the biggest available option, is unlikely to happen now given the pair's status on rival promotions.
However 'The Predator' believes he made the right decision and has hit back at critics. “It wasn’t hard [to ignore criticism] because I knew what I was working on," he said on the DAZN MMA Show. “I knew that I had the best deal. I knew they were just talking out of ignorance. They didn’t know what was going on and was just [reacting to] general speculation."
