Israel Adesanya and Francis Ngannou combine to make up two-thirds of the “Three Kings,” a self-styled nickname for the UFC’s three African-born champions. With Kamaru Usman rounding out the group, the trio are widely viewed as three of the top pound-for-pound fighters in the sport and have helped to usher in a boom era for African MMA.
But the road has been rocky in recent months for Ngannou. The UFC heavyweight champion has been at an impasse with the promotion since his UFC 270 title defense over Ciryl Gane, publicly airing his grievances with many of the UFC’s longstanding business practices and indicating a willingness to explore free agency in 2023 if the situation does not improve as he recovers from surgery to repair torn ligaments in his knee.
For Adesanya it has been a sad state of affairs.
“I felt like some of the stuff that was happening before the Francis fight, I was not a fan of,” Adesanya said Wednesday during an in-studio appearance on The MMA Hour.
” I felt certain things ought to — this is business man, as I stated. It’s impossible to get personal. This is just business. And money’s always around, there’s money everywhere. You can find money everywhere. So for the heavyweight champion of the world in the UFC to be getting paid what he was getting paid was atrocious.”
Ngannou earned a purse of $600,000 for his UFC 270 title defense over Gane, which he won via unanimous decision despite essentially fighting on one leg.
Aside from the money issue, Ngannou’s main contention has been his desire to fight Tyson Fury as a heavyweight champion. Ngannou reiterated that desire after UFC 270, and he and Fury have repeatedly bantered about a potential matchup on social media over recent months. Ngannou’s team believes his contract will expire at the end of 2022 regardless of Ngannou holding the belt, and the champ has expressed a readiness to test the open market if the UFC refuses to let him test himself in the boxing ring.
Adesanya hopes it doesn’t come to that.
” I don’t want him leaving the UFC. It’d just be sad,” Adesanya said. It’s just that I feel this is the , man you know. Take a look at him. He’s the king of all three kingdoms. I just don’t [want him to leave]. Maybe I’m being selfish. But I just feel like I don’t even want him to box. Well, he wants to box — if he does, he should box. With the UFC contract and his own ideas, he can come up with a solution. They allowed [Conor] McGregor to do it so that they could figure out something.
“But I just don’t him want to box. You’re like the worst motherf*cker in the world, I think. You know? He can’t just use his hands. If you really want to fight Francis, fight him. You know? And Tyson’s the kind of guy that might do that. He’s crazy. He might be a ‘Gypsy King’. I just feel like this is the top level of fighting. This is not a biased opinion. I don’t care about kickboxing, jiu-jitsu, boxing — whatever style of fighting that you do alone, if it’s singular, it’s a limited form of fighting. If you want to fight legally, this is the way to do it. The UFC is the place to do it, where it’s like the highest level of fighting.”
