Ah yes, it’s that age-old fairy tale: The story of a man from humble means who immigrates to the land of opportunity and fights his way out of poverty, eventually achieving superstardom based only on his brains, brawn and insatiable desire to be the best.
And, of course, the fairy-tale ending we all know so well: The part where the man sees his lifelong dream crushed by a soulless multi-billion-dollar corporation, squandering his boundless charisma and unlimited potential for seemingly no reason whatsoever.
Or, as we might say in the parlance of our current times: My dudes, it’s hard to put into words how badly the UFC is fucking things up with Francis Ngannou right now.
Ngannou went on Ariel Helwani’s show last week to lay out a laundry list of questions, comments and concerns about the way the world’s largest MMA promotion has been treating him, basically since the moment he won the UFC heavyweight title from Stipe Miocic a bit more than six months ago.
“The UFC tried to discredit me …,” Ngannou told Helwani. “You don’t do that to somebody that you want to promote.”
Hard to disagree with him, frankly. During Ngannou’s short reign—which in a perfect world might have ushered-in a brave new period of stability and profitability in the 265-pound weight class—UFC President Dana White and the rest of the brain trust down there in Las Vegas have engaged in some of their classic un-promotion of the new champ.
The earth had barely righted itself on its axis after Ngannou’s thunderous second-round KO of Miocic at UFC 260 when Jon Jones started making noise about a heavyweight superfight. That mind-blowing clash of titans would almost certainly have produced the biggest PPV buyrate in UFC history and was a clear opportunity for a historic, once-in-a-generation spectacle the likes of which we’ve never seen in the octagon. Somehow, the UFC responded with a resounding: Nah.
Too expensive, we were told. The UFC passed on the potential greatest fight in MMA history at the mere suggestion it would have to pay the fighters a slightly higher percentage of revenue. Right there, we should have known where all this was headed.
“How about Derrick Lewis?” The UFC offered instead. “He’ll do it on the cheap.”
“Haha,” we said, “that’s funny.”
“…”
“You’re joking, right?” We said.
“…”
“You … wait … why are you staring at us like that?”
It turned out the UFC was deadly serious, but when even that fight failed to materialize in time to make the arbitrary date the organization had picked-out on its jampacked calendar, it took Ngannou out of the equation entirely and hustled-up a hilarious interim title bout between Lewis and Ciryl Gane.
Gane won that fight via third-round-TKO at UFC 265 on August 7, in front of Lewis’ hometown fans in Houston, Tex. During one of the broadcast’s prefight promo videos, White charged Ngannou with being “on vacation.”
That didn’t seem to be totally accurate or fair and, to hear Ngannou tell it, the UFC wasn’t just messing with him in public. It was also kind of fucking with him behind the scenes.
Weird feelings between White and Ngannou go all the way back to 2018, when the promoter blasted the fighter after his stinker first meeting with Lewis at UFC 226. White called Ngannou arrogant and said his “ego was just so out of control.” This was kind of funny, because it was clear that Ngannou’s problem in that fight was the exact opposite: he was still suffering an emotional hangover from the first loss of his career (in his initial fight against Miocic five months earlier at UFC 220). Plus, as elite heavyweight MMA fighters go, Ngannou has always actually seemed incredibly down to earth.
But whatever. It certainly wasn’t the first time White decided he believed something and then stuck to it despite any and all evidence to the contrary. Anyway, the heat on these simmering bad feelings only turned up after Ngannou won the championship.
First off, the new champ hoped to make his first title defense in September—which would have amounted to a six-month respite between bouts. Allegedly, that was way too long to wait for the UFC. The company wanted Ngannou in August, around the date that eventually went to Lewis vs. Gane, and that one extra month apparently was A DEAL BREAKER.
There was also the matter of Ngannou’s contract. Big Fran has been pretty upfront all along that, in his new status as potentially transformative champion, he’d like to be paid in kind. Wanting to get paid more has always been a cardinal sin in the UFC and Ngannou now suspects that’s what is causing most of the friction between himself and the executives who want to just keep all the money.
“I don’t want to sign a new deal on certain terms,” Ngannou said to Helwani. “I don’t feel protected in those terms. In the past two years, I’ve fought twice and I have to borrow money to live. Nobody cares about that. I have no guarantee and I have no protection, so based on that experience I want to get something better, better terms on my contract, and obviously paid what I deserve.”
And so, here we are. The UFC claims it has a title unification bout set-up between Ngannou and Gane for January, and maybe even had Jones slated to face the winner before Jones went and pulled the pin on that Life Grenade he constantly carries around with him. But to hear Ngannou tell it, it sure doesn’t sound like any deal to get him in the cage with Gane is actually signed—or anything close to it.
All of this is an incredibly roundabout way to ask the question: Why they do that?
On the surface, isn’t it incredibly dumb for the UFC to treat its heavyweight champion like this? Yes. Yes it is. So, when gifted with a fighter with the obvious potential of Ngannou, why on earth does the UFC seem so hell-bent on royally screwing things up with him?
Short answer: Because it can.
Obviously it would be, like, the most Dana White thing of all time if he arbitrarily decided he just didn’t like this guy who could otherwise be the biggest star in his company’s history and then resolved to be a dick to him for the rest of time. That may be the case here, but there’s also something else going on.
Fact is, the UFC doesn’t totally need fighters like Ngannou anymore. At least not as much as it did 10 years ago. All of this is rigmarole with the new heavyweight champ is really just another reminder that the most important thing to the UFC right now isn’t fighters or fights or even fans. It’s the schedule.
Gotta make those dates! Gotta get that money from ESPN!
If you’ve been paying attention even a little bit, you know that at this point we’re fully through the looking glass into a whole new era of UFC programming. In the Just Some Fights Era, the UFC cares waaaay less about booking the cool fights fans actually want to see than it does about just being a nonstop content factory for ESPN+. That makes sense, since the UFC’s biggest guaranteed revenue streams in this era are the licensing fees it gets from the broadcast giant for exclusive rights to its Fight Night events and pay-per-view cards.
Said licensing fees have changed the damn game, and effectively mean the UFC has EVEN LESS incentive to negotiate with big name fighters now than in the past. And the organization was never great about that in the first place!
So, while PPV buyrates and whatnot are still pretty important to the UFC’s bottom line, the most important thing of all is simply to keep cranking the handle on the sausage grinder. Keep that sweet, sweet live event content spewing out like so much ground beef, regardless of who is in the fights or if anybody actually cares.
Being a significant PPV draw—previously the only metric the UFC taught us was important to a fighter’s worth—matters less than ever now. That means the UFC doesn’t really even have to care too much about dudes like Ngannou, despite the fact that he’s obviously the biggest potential PPV draw to come along since Conor McGregor and maybe the biggest potential heavyweight star of all time (Sorry, Bork Lazer!).
What’s crucial now is just to fill all the dates on the calendar, pocket that Mickey Mouse money and keep it moving. Would it be easy to turn Francis Ngannou into an enormous PPV star? Sure would. Easiest money you ever made in your damn life. But the UFC will only do it if it comes hassle-free.
And it won’t lose one minute of sleep if it has to crush some guy’s fairy tale dream when it gets in the way.
Hey, if you made it this far and didn’t hate it, you should consider signing up for the Co-Main Event Patreon. There you can comment on these posts, argue with other people about them, even call us names or whatever. You also help support the CME and keep the discourse free and unfuckingfettered.
