Ngannou vs. Jones:

Ngannou vs. Jones: A Fight That Never Happened

Dream fights, where martial arts fans imagine placing their favorite fighters against each other, are regular! Sometimes, the organizers make them happen. The Mayweather vs. McGregor boxing fight is one of the perfect examples.
The Ngannou vs. Jones MMA fight would have been another one, and the talks about it went on for years. Moreover, the UFC planned to arrange a fight between its heavyweight champion and the former two-time light heavyweight champion. But in reality, it never came to be. In this article, we will find the possible reasons while explaining how the plans looked.
Such impressive fights are usually popular among bookmakers. We won’t provide any UFC betting tips in this article; plenty of other related texts exist. For example, if you want to start wagering, we recommend reading this article explaining how to download Betlion app Kenya.
 

The Fighters
Before we explain the history of the talks about a possible fight, let us introduce you to both Francis Ngannou and Jon Jones. Both are powerful and have interesting careers, so let’s get more familiar with them. Of course, if you’re already a UFC or MMA fan, you know both of them, so the sections below mainly aim to describe the fighters for those unfamiliar with the sport.
Ngannou
A French fighter of Cameroonian origin, Francis Ngannou’s biography is a perfect “rags to riches” story. He grew up in poverty, started working at the age of ten, emigrated to Paris in his 20s, and spent some time being homeless. The career of the “Predator” was steady and full of successes: long win streaks before becoming a heavyweight champion in 2021, 8 years after debuting in MMA, and 6 years after his first UFC fight. He resigned and joined PFL in 2023, being one of the few UFC champions who left it at the top of their career.
He has an aggressive fighting style and can use his height to his advantage. He’s also good at throwing several punches one after another, which isn’t so common among heavyweights, even though just a few are usually enough. Ngannou is especially great at knocking down his opponents in the first few rounds.

Jones
Jon Jones is a living legend in the world of MMA. Born and raised in the US, he started practicing sports in high school, being great at wrestling and American football, where he played defensive lineman. And that’s when his coach started calling him “Bones,” a nickname that has stuck throughout Jones’ professional career.

Jones has been in the UFC for quite a long time, with his first fight in 2008. The start was quite powerful, although Jones was disqualified during his fourth fight after using an illegal move against Matt Hamill. So far, this has been the only loss in his career, and it’s a rather controversial one, with both Jones and UFC president Dana White trying to overturn it into a no-contest instead of a loss.

After that, Jones hasn’t lost a single fight. He became a Light Heavyweight champion in 2011. He was stripped of the title later due to legal issues and retook it in 2017. He vacated the title in 2020, citing the will to move to heavyweight and wanting more money for his flights. He successfully moved to heavyweight in 2023 and became a champion after a fight against Ciryl Gane.

The Talks
Francis Ngannou was already a well-known fighter when he won the UFC Heavyweight title after defeating Stipe Miocic in 2021. This took his career to the next level. And this is exactly when the talks about a possible match against Jones started getting serious. Although the latter has expressed his desire to fight against Ngannou even in 2020, things didn’t come through, especially since Jones asked for a quite big salary of around USD 25-30 million. These talks didn’t result in anything, which was quite surprising for both the fans and fighters. The fight seemed like too good of an opportunity to pass.

Nevertheless, the fight never happened despite many talks. At the end of 2023, Ngannou expressed that he and Jones would love this opportunity, but Ngannou is now in PFL, and UFC doesn’t participate in cross-promotional matches.
Conclusion
Unfortunately, despite all the talks and hype, and even with all parties being down for an event, the fight between Ngannou and Jones seems impossible. This is quite unfortunate since this is probably the biggest one in the last decade of MMA. After all, both fighters are powerful and well-known. Their aggressive fighting styles would make for an impressive event.

We hope that one day in the future, we will see this fight. Despite all of the possible problems, there are ways to host and organize it, and with both fighters being open to an idea, if they actively pursue it, things may change in the future.