“I’ve been trying to fight Jon Jones for almost three years,” The Predator told ESPN. “Conversations started after my fight with Jairzinho Rozenstruik, then they promised that the winner of our fight with Stipe Miocic would fight Jones, but this did not happen. So I did my best to make this fight happen.”
According to Ngannou, he decided to leave the strongest league in the world after he realized that the fight with Jones plays the role of bait in the negotiations and is a tool of pressure from the UFC.
“In the end, I realized that the UFC was using it as bait to keep me, to force me to do something that I didn’t want, just because I wanted this fight. Yes, I really wanted this fight, but not at any cost.”
At the same time, the Cameroonian heavyweight avoided a direct answer to the question of how his fight with the American would have ended.
“Anything can happen in a fight, so I won’t say that I would definitely knock out Jon Jones, although that is exactly what I intended to do. But since this fight never took place, we will never know – now everyone can come up with an ideal ending for themselves and say how it would have ended. I will tell you that I would knock him out, he will tell you otherwise, and if the fight took place, everything could turn out not at all the way we both think. If it didn’t happen, you never know for sure how it would have turned out.”
A week ago, Jon Jones resumed his career after a three-year hiatus and won the vacant UFC heavyweight championship belt, finishing Cyril Gan by guillotine choke at 2:04 of the first round.