Jones Vs. Ngannou At Allegiant Stadium? ‘You Can Make That Happen’

Ngannou’s coach Eric Nicksick lays out the path the UFC could take to make the biggest fight in the history of mixed martial arts happen.

Jon Jones vs. Francis Ngannou may sound like a pipe dream, but there’s no reason it can’t happen.

That’s the message Ngannou’s head coach Eric Nicksick was sending when he appeared on The MMA Hour with Ariel Helwani (Jones’ favorite person).

Jones and Ngannou have been circling each other since “Bones” revealed his intention to move up to heavyweight. Unfortunately, nothing ever came together before “The Predator” managed to hit free agency and score a boxing fight with Tyson Fury. After nearly winning that, there’s no hotter property than Francis Ngannou.

“In a perfect world, for me, I still want that Jon Jones fight,” Nicksick said (via MMA Fighting). “Hell yeah, I do. Just because I want to compete against the best and I think Jon is the best. I don’t want any more guesses about who is the baddest man on the planet. Let’s run it. Let’s do it.”

Unfortunately, the UFC is historically reluctant to do co-promotions. It has happened though — UFC CEO Dana White sent Chuck Liddell to Japan to compete in PRIDE FC. And then there was the Floyd Mayweather vs. Conor McGregor fight. So all the UFC has to do is agree to work with the PFL.

“You can make that happen,” Nicksick claimed. “Both sides can make that happen if they really wanted to. Set your egos aside , let’s get Allegiant Stadium, let’s give what the fans want and let’s get Jon and Francis and let’s see who the baddest man on the planet is.

“I want to compete against the best. I’ve said that time and time again. It’s no disrespect to Jon. I think he’s the best to ever do it, but I want that opportunity to coach against him and I want that opportunity to go beat the guy.”

Nicksick reasoned that the UFC has already hurt itself enough by pushing Ngannou out and not getting a piece of the Fury fight.

“I think now can kind of right that wrong and give yourself the opportunity and cross-promote,” he said. “Do a PFL-UFC and let’s put the baddest man on the planet up against the other one. Let’s figure it out. Let’s do it at Allegiant Stadium, let’s sell the place out. Let’s sell all these pay-per-view buys.”

“Everybody wins at the end of the day,” he concluded. “Everybody wins. The fans win. The fighters win. The promoters win. Possibly even the UFC because look at this way, Francis obviously is kind of making them eat their words. He walked away for free and he’s going out and doing his thing.”

“At the end of the day, that’s what we wanted. We wanted to box and do it under the Zuffa banner and co-promote. I think anything’s possible.”