UFC CEO Dana White is making things personal with Francis Ngannou.
White and Ngannou have gone back and forth in the media regularly since Ngannou left the UFC as a free agent almost two years ago. But White had never attacked the former heavyweight champion’s character until Saturday.
Speaking at the UFC 308 postfight press conference in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, White said he didn’t like Ngannou and didn’t want to work with him years before they parted ways.
“I was all about Francis in the beginning, and then I found out who Francis was … I didn’t like Francis as a person,” White said. “Wasn’t a guy I wanted to do business with. My boys were telling me he’s misunderstood, and I told them, ‘When somebody shows you who they are, believe them.'”
He added, “Francis isn’t a good guy. Plays a good guy – ‘I don’t understand a language’ – so he seems like he’s a nice guy. He’s not. And he’s just not a guy that I wanted to be in business with. Period, end of story. Whether he became the champion or not.”
White said his relationship with Ngannou deteriorated prior to Ngannou’s first title fight against Stipe Miocic in 2018, though he didn’t go into specific detail about why.
“He pulled some shit before the first Stipe fight, and I said, ‘I’m done with this guy,'” White said. “And then Stipe beat the shit out of him. Great night. And then, yeah, we never had a relationship after that.”
Earlier this week, White revealed that he planned to release Ngannou after his lackluster loss to Derrick Lewis in 2018 before “somebody around here begged me not to do it.”
Ngannou responded in an interview on SiriusXM’s “Fight Nation,” saying he believes the constant criticism from White is a result of the UFC CEO not being able to “handle” that the promotion lost Ngannou to free agency.
After leaving the UFC in January 2023 as the reigning heavyweight champ, Ngannou signed a deal with the PFL later that year. Then, he crossed over to boxing for two lucrative matches against Tyson Fury and Anthony Joshua, both of which he lost. The Cameroonian returned to MMA on Oct. 19 and knocked out Renan Ferreira in the first round of the PFL Super Fights: Battle of the Giants main event in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.
Though Ngannou’s win reignited interest – within the MMA community – in a potential matchup against current UFC heavyweight champion Jon Jones, White is adamant he’ll never work with Ngannou again.
“We’ll never be in business together,” White said. “You can tell – we don’t like each other.”
