Israel Adesanya does not approve of the UFC’s attempts to erase Francis Ngannou’s legacy.
On Saturday, ‘The Last Stylebender’ will make his return to the Octagon in a bid to become a three-time middleweight world champion. Standing in his way will be the division’s reigning king, Dricus Du Plessis, who is primed to bag his first successful defense and take the title back home to South Africa.
Undoubtedly cheering on Adesanya will be former UFC heavyweight champ Ngannou who remains close friends with the ‘Stylebender’ despite walking away from the promotion more than a year ago in search of greener pastures. Since his exit, you’d be hard-pressed to find any mention of Ngannou on UFC programming, but that hasn’t stopped CEO Dana White from taking a dig at the Cameroonian and his new employer, the Professional Fighters League, anytime the opportunity arises.
Earlier this year, the UFC went so far as to label Tafon Nchukwi the company’s first and only Cameroonian fighter during a live broadcast, completely ignoring the fact that Ngannou was born, raised, and lived a large portion of his life in the Central African country.
Another incident occurred earlier this week when fans noticed that a comment Adesanya made about Ngannou was seemingly edited out of the UFC 305 Embedded series. ‘Stylebender’ noticed it as well and was quick to voice his displeasure over his employer’s continued attempts to ignore Ngannou’s place in UFC history.
“I will support them as well, and also, you could never erase Francis’s history from the UFC.” Israel Adesanya stated in an interview with ESPN MMA. “I’ll say that. It’s part of history, we need to fix that. I don’t like that, I don’t like that we’re just trying to cut out a really important part of history.”
He continued, “It’s silly. It’s really silly. But we’ll fix that, that’s for later on. We will fix that” (h/t BJPenn.com).
Francis Ngannou makes his PFL debut in October
Eight weeks after Israel Adesanya attempts to settle some business with Dricus Du Plessis, Ngannou will make his long-awaited PFL debut. Headlining the promotion’s first superfight series on pay-per-view, ‘The Predator’ will square off with 2023 PFL heavyweight tournament winner Renan Ferreira.
Ferreira earned the opportunity to fight Ngannou with a 21-second knockout of Ryan Bader at the PFL vs. Bellator event in Riyadh last year.
Overall, Ngannou is 17-3 in his professional mixed martial arts career with 11 of his victories coming by way of KO. He has not lost an MMA bout since July 2018.