Author: Anton Tabuena

Sean O’Malley thinks Francis Ngannou isn’t in a great position now.

Francis Ngannou and Dana White’s relationship have seemingly deteriorated following a long and public contract dispute. The heavyweight champion is said to get knee surgery soon, then likely wait out the remaining time on his UFC deal.

As Ngannou could possibly be the first to enter free agency even as the sitting UFC champion, many personalities have been weighing in on the hot topic. One of them has been Sean O’Malley, who says Ngannou shouldn’t have “talked shit” to his “boss” and believes he’s “not in a great position” as a result.

“I’m not sure if we talked too much about Dana not putting the belt around Francis. I think, dude, if you’re going to go out there and just talk shit about the boss and the company, you can’t just expect no backlash. Right?” O’Malley said on his YouTube channel. “It makes sense that—Dana is running a business, and his heavyweight champion, the one who is the main f—king champ, the baddest dude on planet earth, is just every interview he gets, talking shit.

“And I don’t want to say talking shit in a bad way. I guess he is just talking facts. But it is talking shit, and you can’t do that to the UFC,” he argued. “You can’t do that to Dana. You can’t do that to your boss. You can, but now Ngannou is not in a great position.

“Imagine he’s the heavyweight champion of the world, him and Dana have a great relationship. I bet there’s leeway there to make some negotiations, but now it’s not happening.”

At UFC 270, Ngannou took home just $600,000 (plus an estimate of around $400,000 more, if the event sold 500K PPVs). If he becomes a true free agent, the heavyweight champion can field far more lucrative offers while he’s coming off a win and his profile is at its highest.

From short to long term deals in MMA, boxing crossovers, or maybe even a return to the UFC on a far better deal, Ngannou will certainly have better options compared to when there was only one buyer that holds all the leverage. As seen in other sports, the opportunities and competition that free agency brings can only help drive up salaries for the athletes.

Obviously some of the things said in public (from both sides) could’ve been better, but contrary to what O’Malley says, Ngannou entering free agency actually puts him in the best situation he’s ever been in his career.

Like Dana White, Chael Sonnen thinks Francis Ngannou is “being given bad advice”

Things have deteriorated between Francis Ngannou and the UFC brass that the heavyweight champion now badly wants out of his UFC contract, even if it means walking away from millions of dollars.

Ngannou supposedly wants to sit out the remaining months left on his deal — mostly just stemming from the champion’s clause — and plans to pursue free agency. He wants to get free of the UFC’s restrictive contracts, to not only get far better pay, but to also get more control in his career.

Dana White previously slammed Ngannou’s management for these issues, and it looks like Chael Sonnen agrees. The former UFC star, who has sided with the promotion before in these types of issues, also thinks Ngannou is getting “bad advice.”

Sonnen says without any guarantees, it’s “silly” to hold out with the UFC and just hope a boxing promoter is “willing to lose a ton of money” on him.

“I found [the post-fight comments] to be powerful, because I no longer think he’s bluffing. I do believe Francis is being given bad advice,” Sonnen said on his podcast (transcribed by MMA Fighting). “Wherever Francis is thinking that the world wants him to go and fight Tyson Fury, I don’t know who put that in his head. But that’s Francis’ dream, and I’d be way out of bounds trying to take it from him.

“If you’ve got some promoter out there that’s willing to lose a ton of money and wants to throw it at that match — and how they’re going to package it and how they’re going to sell, I really haven’t the foggiest idea — but if they want to do it, that’s their business, it’s not ours,” he said.

“It would seem like a very risky thing, and even a silly thing, to hold out for [a Fury fight] when you don’t know that you have a bird in the hand. Francis being active [in the UFC] is looking at anywhere from six to nine million dollars this year. So his opportunity cost just to wait until December for a fight that he does not have is the better part of your career earnings. That’s his decision.”

While touting the UFC brand, Sonnen also seemingly questioned the heavyweight star’s drawing ability.

“If December rolls around next year and Francis has been unseen, and Francis is no longer the undisputed champion and he no longer has the power of the organization behind him, the [likeliness] of a payday in boxing with Fury exponentially declines,” Sonnen said. “That’s always a hard one to see.”

There’s a few things to unpack from Sonnen’s statements, but the biggest thing is that Ngannou really wouldn’t be holding out for too long if we consider his knee injury. With the torn MCL and damaged ACL, Ngannou will be having surgery and he really is going to be on the sidelines for several months anyway.

It’s also worth pointing out how if he stayed, Ngannou really wouldn’t be getting nine million dollars from the UFC this year either.

Even as champion, he only had a $600,000 purse for UFC 270. If that event sold 500,000 PPVs, on the standard rate Ngannou would’ve taken home an additional $400,000. That’s a total of just $1 million for a relatively big fight. So even if Ngannou came back from knee injury quicker than the 9-10 months they gave, he still would need a significant pay bump and multiple fights in rapid succession to even reach that figure Sonnen brought up.

Add in the fact that Ngannou has complained about inactivity and has only been booked once a year lately, and it’s understandable how this becomes an easier decision for him to just recover and wait to truly test his market value in free agency.

Dana White was uncharacteristically absent after the UFC 270 main event.

It’s no secret that Dana White and Francis Ngannou have butted heads and had issues with each other during this latest contract dispute. That’s why the UFC President’s absence after Ngannou’s big win over Ciryl Gane drew some interesting reactions from fans and pundits alike.

White typically enters the cage and presents the UFC title to the winners of championship fights. He did just that for Deiveson Figueiredo, draping the flyweight belt on his shoulder after the UFC 270 co-main event. The UFC President was noticeably absent one fight later though, when it was Ngannou’s turn to get his hand raised and be presented with the title.

To add to that, White was also a no-show at the post-fight press conference, ditching his normal duties of announcing fight night bonuses, and fielding questions about the event’s key bouts.

“I don’t know. You have to ask him. No, I did not have anything to do about that,” Ngannou said about White not putting the belt around his waist. “I think that was their decision. I’m about to ask about that, too.

“Wow, okay, I didn’t know that (he skipped the press conference) too,” Ngannou reacted with a laugh.

Ngannou and his management have had issues with his restrictive contract for a while now. The heavyweight champion says it’s not simply just about money, but also on how he’s been treated during his tenure.

“It’s been a long time I’ve been wondering about my future in the company,” Ngannou said. “So nothing has changed. I’m still in the same position.”

The two champions and their opponents got six figures, while several on the card are on minimum contracts.

Payouts for UFC events are rarely made public these days, ever since Las Vegas and Florida started catering to the promotion’s desire to keep purses hidden. UFC 270 was hosted in California though, so for this event, we do get a glimpse of the fighters’ disclosed salaries.

Heavyweight champion Francis Ngannou recently went on record to express dissatisfaction with his contract, vowing that after UFC 270, he “will not fight for $500K, $600K anymore.” This is exactly what he and his opponent Ciryl Gane had disclosed.

Topping the bill is Ngannou who took a base pay of $600,000, while Gane, who came into the event with the interim UFC belt, had a purse of $500,000.

The flyweight title bout had significantly smaller purses compared to their heavyweight counterparts. The new champion in Deiveson Figueiredo had a disclosed pay of $150,000 and the now former title holder in Brandon Moreno was at $200,000.

It’s also worth pointing out that there were several fighters with minimum purses on the card.

Four fighters — including one on the main card — are on the standard “minimum” contracts for directly signed UFC fighters at $12,000.

That wasn’t the lowest pay on the card though. Five other fighters had even smaller contracts of just $10,000, as they were veterans of Dana White’s Contender Series, which produces cheaper content for the promotion.

Bloody Elbow’s business analyst, John Nash did some quick napkin math with the figures that were released. Even factoring the typical PPV cuts and possible discretionary bonuses, it seems like once again, fighters didn’t make much compared to the money that the event will generate for the UFC:

Here’s the full list of UFC 270 disclosed purses and payouts, courtesy of MMA Fighting.

Francis Ngannou: $600,000 (no win bonus)

Ciryl Gane: $500,000

Deiveson Figueiredo: $150,000 (no win bonus)

Brandon Moreno: $200,000

Michel Pereira: $100,000 ($50,000 win bonus)

Andre Fialho: $12,000

Said Nurmagomedov: $50,000 ($25,000 win bonus)

Cody Stamann: $65,000

Michael Morales: $20,000 ($10,000 win bonus)

Trevin Giles: $45,000

Victor Henry: $40,000 ($20,000 win bonus)

Raoni Barcelos: $29,000

Jack Della Maddalena: $20,000 ($10,000 win bonus)

Pete Rodriguez: $12,000

Tony Gravely: $44,000 ($22,000 win bonus)

Saimon Oliveira: $10,000

Matt Frevola: $46,000 ($23,000 win bonus)

Genaro Valdez: $10,000

Vanessa Demopoulos: $24,000 ($12,000 win bonus)

Silvana Gomez Juarez: $12,000

Jasmine Jasudavicius: $20,000 ($10,000 win bonus)

Kay Hansen: $17,000

This is UFC 270 in a few short tweets!

UFC 270 is in the books, and it saw two intriguing title bouts. In the main event, Francis Ngannou showed a new wrinkle to his game as he successfully defended his heavyweight crown.

If you told me before tonight that Ngannou would lose the first two rounds but win the final three, I wouldn’t have believed you. Add how he’ll do all that by out-grappling Gane to win a decision and I would’ve thought you were absolutely crazy. But that’s exactly what happened, and apparently he was dealing with a completely torn MCL as well.

It didn’t have the same highlight reel as his previous fights, but the idea of Ngannou still constantly improving and truly rounding out his game is a pretty scary thought for other heavyweights.

In the co-main event, Deiveson Figueiredo made some quality adjustments to his overall game, and got his belt back from Brandon Moreno. He was more patient, didn’t head hunt, and in turn, didn’t put himself in bad situations — especially on the ground. It was still very competitive and very entertaining, and honestly, I wouldn’t mind seeing a fourth fight.

Below, we analyze the pros and cons of each of the key bouts, with a quick twitter thread that’s short and fitting for people’s social media era attention spans:

And that’s about it. For more social media musings, follow me on twitter over at @antontabuena, and of course you should do that for Bloody Elbow’s official twitter account as well.

Watch video from the UFC 270 main event title fight.

Headlining UFC 270 was the heavyweight title clash between Francis Ngannou and Ciryl Gane. So much was made about this bout outside the cage, being former teammates and sparring partners, along with Ngannou’s contract dispute with the UFC. Inside the cage, Ngannou still emerged on top.

In a bout between two heavyweight strikers, it was actually decided by grappling exchanges.

Watch highlights from the title bout, along with a snippet from our play-by-play of the contest.

Francis Ngannou vs. Ciryl Gane, round 5

Inside leg kick from Ngannou. Lead elbow and leg kick from Gane. Ngannou with a right. Gane lands two body shots. Gane with a left that gets through. Gane with a leg kick. Gane ducks under and gets a takedown. Ngannou gets an underhook and tries to power up. Gane won’t let it happen and settles into his full guard. Gane attacks a leg but gives up position! He attacks the leg again! He’s all over a knee bar but it doesn’t look like Ngannou is in danger. Ngannou takes top position and is really close to mount! Two minutes to go. He’s settled into half. But he hasn’t thrown a punch. Gane turns the hips but they’re pretty stalled out. They’re posturing but nothing offensive is happening. I don’t even know what to say. I guess 10-9 and 48-47 Ngannou?

Francis Ngannou defeated Cyril Gane via unanimous decision (48-47, 48-47, 49-46)