Fact Check! Not Even ‘Bones’ Superfight Touches Ngannou Earnings

Photo by Richard Pelham/Getty Images

Sorry, Dana! The UFC’s offer to Ngannou only comes close to touching his boxing and PFL pay with the help of two hypothetical bouts against Jon Jones.

Francis Ngannou may not be ready to lay out exactly how much he’s making outside the UFC, but that doesn’t mean we can’t figure it out ourselves.

Dana White recently claimed “The Predator” would have made more money in the UFC than he’s getting through boxing and the PFL. Ngannou denied that, calling the UFC contract ‘a trap’ and White’s claims ‘a lie.’ So who is telling the truth?

On a recent episode of the ‘Hey, Not The Face’ podcast, journalist John Nash shared information sourced from Ngannou’s former management team at CAA that confirmed exactly what the UFC offered Franny to stay.

“He was offered a deal that basically paid four to five million as champion ... this was after the [Ciryl] Gane fight.” Nash said. “The final offer the UFC made was against Jon Jones. He would get $8 million plus pay-per-view ... so around, if you did a million buys, he’d make over ten million. If you did a million and a half, which was the projected amount that Jones vs. Ngannou would do, it was up to $13 million.”

“If he fought three times, if he fought Jones back to back, he would make a lot of money. But if Jones didn’t take the fight or if one of them got beat so badly there wasn’t a rematch or whatever, his rate would drop for his other fights, his non-Jon Jones fights. So down again to about four or five, maybe six million max depending on what the final offer was and all the other variables, plus pay-per-view.”

Ngannou has already made Jones superfight money twice since leaving the UFC.

“He made twelve or thirteen million, around that, for [Tyson] Fury and fifteen, sixteen million, in that ballpark for Joshua,” Nash said. “You put those two together and he made about $28 million.”

Nash also had numbers for Ngannou’s PFL deal through information in a Harvard Business School case study and speaking to other promotions that tried to sign the Cameroonian fighter.

“[PFL] matched the UFC’s $8 million offer,” Nash said. “So $8 million and then on top of that, he had a big signing bonus, seven figures. Again, my understanding is about $2 million.”

Nash revealed the PFL’s two-fight deal has Ngannou making $8 million for his first fight and $12 million for his second, plus various pay-per-view and gate bonuses. With lower sales due to it being a non-UFC PPV held in Saudi Arabia, he expected “The Predator” to walk away with roughly $10 million from his ‘Battle of the Giants’ showdown with Renan Ferreira on October 19th.

So how does the UFC offer stack up to what Ngannou has gotten elsewhere? Not badly ... if everything went perfectly to plan. Francis would have had to win all his fights, stay champion, and win the elusive Jon Jones sweepstakes, possibly twice, to match. Two “Bones” superfights and a title fight would hypothetically make him around $31 million.

“Let’s say he wasn’t perfect,” Nash said. “The amount of money might have fallen to like $15 to $18 million easily [for three fights]. But he’s gonna make close to $50 million on four fights in a two year span since leaving the UFC. For the world of MMA, that’s a pretty impressive amount. That’s more than anybody but Conor McGregor.”

Not bad for a man who “fumbled the bag.”

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