Francis Ngannou has claimed he accidentally knocked out rival Cyril Gane with a head kick in sparring when the pair trained together.
The heavyweights will meet in a title clash at UFC 270 with Ngannou set to fight in his final contracted bout with the UFC as negotiations over a new deal continue to stall.
Footage emerged from his rivals' camp of the pair training together at the MMA Factory gym in Paris.
However Ngannou has revealed that he believes only clips were released from the entire session due to the accidental knockout kick he landed on Gane.
"First of all it wasn't the sparring footage it was a clip," Ngannou said during the UFC media day. "I knocked him out with a left high kick.
"There is a lot of reasons why the footage didn't come out, let me say this it wasn't a voluntary knockout it was in sparring it was an accident. I didn't intend to knock him out and I didn't go there to knock him out, so personally it isn't something I will go around and be proud of.
"I won't walk around and feel tough because I knocked my sparring partner out, usually stuff like that happens in training because we are committed to take care of our partner, yeah it was an accident."
Ngannou has been in a feud with his former coach Fernand Lopez who helped guide him through the early stages of his career as he rose in the UFC.
The Cameroon star was based in France with Lopez before he made the decision to leave the gym after the footage was taken in 2019.
He was unimpressed with the release of the footage in the build-up to their title clash which he believed was done to make him look bad ahead of a hotly-anticipated meeting.
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In response to the publishing of the footage, Ngannou branded his former coach "evil" after seeing the footage accompanied with comments from Lopez.
“Recently, I saw something about him," Ngannou said of Lopez in a video on his official YouTube channel.
"They sent me something like, where his coach Fernand said I told [UFC matchmaker] Mick Maynard that Ciryl is good but not that good or something like that.
"I’m like, ‘Man, this is nasty,' this is not a fair game anymore - it’s not a fair game anymore. I understand this position is not; you want to take everything, you want to destroy somebody.
"But to go after him like that, associate other people; I mean, I think this is evil - but I know the man, and I know how it processed.”
