UFC heavyweight champion Francis Ngannou has been at odds with the organization for a while now, and there hasn’t been any progress. “The Predator” did defend the heavyweight title at UFC 270 against Ciryl Gane, but he says his contract situation remains uncertain.
With the way things are going, it won’t be surprising if Ngannou’s situation took a turn for the worse. For former UFC two-division champion Randy Couture, it could very well be the scenario, based on his own experience.
Couture appeared on Monday’s episode of The MMA Hour where he shared some concerns about Ngannou’s situation.
“(The UFC has)… well, not endless, but a lot of money,” Couture told Ariel Helwani. “They’ll drag Francis into court and try to bleed him of the money that he has accrued to his fighting. And at some point, you have to make a decision on what you want to do.
“This is what happened to me. I was fighting to try and make that Fedor fight happen. Spending a lot of my own money, fighting the injunctions, and the things they were trying to do to keep me from executing what I saw in the language of the contract and being able to go somewhere else and make the fight happen. Because they couldn’t come up and come to terms with M1 Global, who was kinda representing Fedor.”
At this point, Couture says Ngannou will need to pick a side and do what’s best for his career, moving forward.
“Francis is gonna find himself in a very similar situation,” he said. “If he tries to walk away, and say the contract ended here, they’re gonna contest that, they’re gonna drag him into court, gonna force him to spend a bunch of money on lawyers and stuff that he’s not gonna wanna do.
“And he’s gonna have to, at some point, really make a decision, unfortunately, whether he wants to stop spending money on lawyers and legal issues and go back to doing what he loves to do, which is fight. And it’s a shame to be in that situation.”
Couture also shed some light on his own contract dispute at the time, where he says he was made to go through a 17-page document. But without giving specifics, he says the paperwork for the Ultimate Fighter is much worse.
“(My contract) doesn’t even compare to the one they’re making these guys sign (for) the Ultimate Fighter. Obviously, (I) was involved in the first four seasons of the Ultimate Fighter and several of my athletes: Nate Quarry, Chris Leben, others that signed those contracts.
“And you wanna see a horrible contract, a one-sided mess, take a look at one of those contracts. It’s pretty horrible.”
Couture’s last fight happened in 2011 at UFC 129, when he was knocked out by Lyoto Machida’s crane kick. He announced his retirement after the fight and had since spoken against his former promoter and their business practices.
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