Francis Ngannou has reached a boiling point with his current situation.
The majority of the UFC’s top-ranked heavyweights are either booked, or Ngannou already has taken them out. Basically, there’s no one available for “The Predator” – who said he just wants to fight.
“They have to do something with me,” Ngannou told MMA Junkie. “OK, so what is that? I want the damn answer. I want to know what’s my position. I want to know what I’m doing here. I’m the No. 2 (heavyweight), and everyone is booked. I’m just here looking like, I don’t know, some guy desperate to get a fight.”
Ngannou (14-2 MMA, 9-2 UFC) has knocked out his past three opponents in the first round. He stopped Curtis Blaydes, followed by two former heavyweight champions in Cain Velasquez and Junior Dos Santos.
He thinks he’s more than earned his shot at the title, but with the UFC looking to book a trilogy fight between heavyweight champion Stipe Miocic and former champ Daniel Cormier, Ngannou wants to know where he fits into the picture.
“Actually, in my position, the only fight I’ll be running to is the title – but I don’t know if they want to make me run to any fight,” Ngannou said. “Also, I wanted to fight before the end of the year. Like, it doesn’t matter who that is. I have to fight because I get that you guys don’t give much. But even though they don’t care, it’s kind of frustrating. Right now, it’s not something that I’m very happy to talk about. It’s been an exhausting process.”
The UFC has come up with a couple of propositions for Ngannou, but he’s not too keen on either of them because they require him to wait and hope for certain outcomes.
He doesn’t think a fighter in his position, at the top of the rankings, should be waiting for things to play out.
“It’s very frustrating right now, and I kind of (have to) think what to do, what is possible,” Ngannou said. “The only guy in the top 10 that is available right now, as I saw, is Shamil (Abdurakhimov). But Shamil just lost against Curtis Blaydes. Curtis Blaydes doesn’t have a fight, and I fought him twice already. So it’s not some fight that I’m looking for. And that’s all. They said I could wait to see what’s going on Nov. 9, to see maybe if (Alexander) Volkov beats ‘JDS.’ But the problem – first of all, that’s not a fight I’m looking for. And second of all, Volkov turned this fight down twice.
“Why do I have to expect somebody to win a fight or don’t get hurt to accept the fight? ‘I don’t know.’ That was their answer: to wait and see, either in November or in December, to see if Volkov wins or if Walt Harris wins. Then we will see if they want to fight me if they are not injured.”
With Cormier looking to retire soon, and a score to settle with Miocic, it is unlikely that Ngannou will get his shot at gold anytime soon. Waiting would be an option for him, but with the Miocic-Cormier trilogy bout targeted for the first quarter of 2020, he’d have to sit on the sidelines for quite a while.
Ngannou said he is not willing to do that. He thinks he should have been the one fighting Miocic for the title in the first place.
“They’re going to have to fight the trilogy, but why should I not fight before?” Ngannou said. “I think I deserve this fight, and the problem is, they’re planning to make this like in March. And notice: March is going to be like nine months from my last fight, because my last fight was in June. Then, they’re going to expect if somebody, if the winner doesn’t get hurt, I’m willing to fight in three months. It’s going to go over one year from my last fight, and if something happens, if the winner gets hurt or injured and is going to take time off, then what happens?
“Right now, I don’t know if I’m a fighter or not. My promoter, my boss doesn’t care about me. So this process is kind of exhausting.”
https://mmajunkie.usatoday.com/2019/10/francis-ngannou-frustrated-with-ufc-eager-to-fight-exhausting-process-miocic-cormier