Former UFC heavyweight champion Francis Ngannou is uncertain about his next career move following a second loss in his professional boxing career, but has not ruled out a return to MMA or continuing with boxing to “claim my respect, my dignity”.
Francis Ngannou’s next step is a mystery. He’s not sure what’s next.
Earlier this month, he faced Anthony Joshua in a boxing match in Riyadh. It didn’t go well. He was knocked out in the second round. Brutally. This moved Ngannou to 0-2 in his professional boxing career.
Questions are now being raised. Will the former UFC heavyweight champion return to MMA? Will he compete for the PFL?
Ngannou himself doesn’t know. “Right now, I don’t know,” he said on The MMA Hour. He feels like boxing owes him something. Something he has to claim. The fight didn’t go as it should have. He thinks he needs to box again to claim his respect, his dignity, everything.
“MMA is there. I don’t really know. It depends on the time frame of what’s happening. But maybe it could be MMA first. I don’t really know.”
Ngannou hasn’t competed in MMA since his final UFC fight in January 2022. He defended his heavyweight title against Ciryl Gane. He signed a lucrative partnership with the PFL in 2023, but hasn’t competed for them. He’s focused on boxing.
PFL co-founder Donn Davis expects Ngannou to make his PFL debut against Renan Ferreira. It will be on a pay-per-view in Saudi Arabia. No later than September.
Ngannou loves boxing. There’s speculation about whether he’ll return to MMA. But the lineal heavyweight MMA champion has shut those concerns down.
“I think I still get excited about the idea of fighting MMA,” Ngannou said. “MMA now is not like the easier one, but the usual one. … In any fight you can lose, but at least in MMA there are a lot of things I understand, a lot of things that can be controlled, unlike boxing, which is the wild west. And it’s a little bit more comfortable, to be honest. I have my own experience there.”
Despite not competing for PFL, Ngannou has been a fixture at its events. He was at the PFL vs. Bellator card. The PFL announced that Ngannou would make his PFL debut against the winner of the main event fight between Ferreira and Ryan Bader. But after Ferreira won, Ngannou left the arena. Some fans speculated his disinterest in the matchup. But Ngannou says it was just a misunderstanding.
“It was a surprise. It came really fast and I didn’t have time to process, but I talked to [PFL CEO Peter Murray] and that wasn’t a problem,” Ngannou said. “I didn’t go to get in the cage — when the fight finished, I was there and everybody went over to the cage, I was there on my own. I don’t know, it’s not my show. I don’t decide to walk and go into the cage. I sat there for a little while, applaud Renan Ferreira, and that was it. At some point, I was by myself and I realized I should leave. That’s what happened. It’s not like I was unhappy or something.
“Nobody told me to go to the cage.”
For Ngannou, the question of an MMA return seems to be entirely about timing. For the past year, Ngannou pursued boxing interests and the lucrative paychecks that come with them. But after the Joshua loss, there’s no obvious next step in the squared circle for the moment. That means 2024 could be the year Ngannou finally makes his PFL debut, so long as the timing works out.
“Everything can happen,” Ngannou said. “I think it all depends on the time frame. At first — because the winner of my fight was scheduled to fight the winner of Tyson Fury and [Oleksandr] Usyk — if I won the fight … then maybe I have to fight that first. But now, everything is possible. I have no obligation to fight anyone, so if the timing is right for MMA first, then I fight first. If it’s a boxing match that the timing comes first, then I’ll do it.