Francis Ngannou says money he’ll make from boxing Tyson Fury is ‘night and day’ from UFC contract
Francis Ngannou is about to get paid.
Earlier this year, Ngannou signed a lucrative partnership with the PFL with plans to debut in 2024 after making his professional boxing debut. Last week, that boxing debut was finally announced: Ngannou faces lineal heavyweight champion Tyson Fury on Oct. 28 in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. While there are still some details to be ironed out, one thing is for certain — Ngannou is about to make more money in one fight than he made his entire UFC career.
“What I will tell you is that, compared to what I was making for my UFC fight, it’s day and night,” Ngannou said Monday on The MMA Hour. “It’s life changing. And it would be the same thing if I was fighting in the PFL first. What I was making, what I did make in my last [UFC] fight, doesn’t even count. It’s not close, anywhere close.”
“Definitely yes,” Ngannou added when asked if the purse was more than his entire UFC career combined. “One-hundred percent, yes. I didn’t make that much in my entire UFC career, basically after turning down all those contracts that could have made me more money. But yes, if we count it, absolutely.”
Ngannou officially left the UFC at the beginning of this year after fighting out his contract in 2022. The UFC attempted to retain the services of its heavyweight champion, with Ngannou saying they offered him “around $8 million” to face Jon Jones at UFC 285, but that he passed because the contract was too restrictive. Ngannou reiterated that he will make more for facing Fury, but also added that the UFC’s offer was not exactly what it seemed.
“I have heard so many times people say, ‘Oh, they offered him $8 million a fight, they offered him this and that,’ which is not exactly what [they offered],” Ngannou said. “There was a trick there and it was bad. It was just in order for me to put the pen on the paper. There was just one big number and then behind it the paper was blank, pretty much. So it’s not like, I’m sure you’re going to say $3 million times three, for three fights. That’s not what it was. It wasn’t like that. It was the same tactic. To pull some number up and want to impress you to get you to sign that contract.”
For all the talk of money, Ngannou still declined to reveal the exact financials behind his boxing superfight, but reports circulating estimate Ngannou’s payday to be in the eight figures. Ngannou himself did not confirm that figure, nor whether he was getting pay-per-view points, stating only that he would not be leaving Saudi Arabia “empty-handed.”
But Ngannou was willing to confirm another big piece of information regarding the fight: The existence of a rematch clause.
“There is a potential rematch clause,” Ngannou said. “I don’t know exactly how to explain that language, but yes, there’s a rematch inside there.
“[If I win], definitely,” Ngannou clarified. “[If Fury wins], I don’t know. We’ll see how it goes. That’s why I have to win this fight. I have to put everything to get that rematch.”
Whatever the financials end up ultimately being, the fight is already an unequivocal win for Ngannou, who essentially got everything he wanted when he first began negotiating his free agency, and did so despite an enormous amount of backlash and doubters.
And for the lineal heavyweight champion of MMA, that is as good of a feeling as knowing that he is going to financially set for the rest of his life.
“It’s the story of my life,” Ngannou said. “Everything that I have done, nobody has ever believed in me until it was done. This was the case [here] and I felt pretty good about it. I was like, ‘Yes. I got it done.’ People talk about, ‘How much you’re making, you’re making a lot of money,’ which is true, but my feeling wasn’t about what I’m going to make.
“It was like, ‘I got this done one more time.’ My capability to get things done, to hang on tight and finally get the outcome. It was more about that. That was the most exciting one. I feel relieved, I feel happy. That was a hell of a feeling.”