In the UFC 226 Post-Fight press conference, Dana White laid into Francis Ngannou, claiming that the heavyweight’s ego had spiraled out of control in the weeks prior to his championship fight against Stipe Miocic at UFC 220. On a recent edition of UFC Unfiltered, White doubled down on these claims:
“Francis Ngannou, at the time he was coming up, I believed this guy was going to be the guy, was going to be the heavyweight champion,” White said. “He lost his mind. This guy completely lost his mind and started to act – I don’t know – in a way you just don’t act. I completely saw it coming.”
Ngannou called White’s comments hurtful and remarked that White should have spoken to him about these alleged egotistical outbursts man to man. Well, today, an unexpected party has come forward to corroborate White’s assessment of Ngannou’s ego, and it is none other than coach of Francis Ngannou, Fernand Lopez:
“The only thing I can say is Dana was speaking about Francis’ ego is probably one of the truths that I witnessed that Dana White said,” Lopez told MMANews.pl. “It’s probably the only truth that I know for a fact, that’s a fact.Why am I saying that? I’m saying that because Ngannou is like a brother for me and when you’re dealing with a brother, problems with your brother, you have to be honest with your brother so he can be a better man.
“In order to make Francis a better man, there are some people that have to have the bad role. The bad job is to tell Ngannou ‘You have a big ego and you have changed with the time.’ That’s the truth.
I had the conversation with Ngannou and I said to him ‘You have changed my friend, you have changed. You’re not the same anymore. Your ego is killing you, and it’s just about your ego.’”
Headed into his UFC 226 bout against Derrick Lewis, Ngannou’s camp was with Syndicate MMA instead of the MMA Factory. Lopez commented on this decision and whether there was a schism in the relationship between himself and Ngannou:
“All the time he was in Vegas he was still in my team,” Lopez said. “He never left the team, the membership. Every time he was asked if he was an MMA Factory member he didn’t let me down on that. He was always saying that. The only problem was, there’s never been a problem between us. During the last fight, we decided to make the camp with Syndicate MMA because the gym was close to the UFC Institute. So for his last fight, his mentor was John Wood of Syndicate. He called and said to me and asked me if I could come and assist him as a friend and as an assistant coach, which made sense and that was a good thing. But what I’m saying is the ego can make you go the wrong way and hurt people.
Lopez also used the interview to clear the air about the coach’s fault, or lack thereof, in Ngannou’s loss to Stipe Miocic at UFC 220 and the ensuing criticism he endured in the event’s aftermath:
“Myself, I got hurt with a lot of dedication to Francis’ career. I got hurt, a lot. When Francis lost the fight with Stipe, no one ever heard Francis say he lost because he didn’t follow the game plan. He did the opposite of the game plan that we worked. That loss for Francis, for the belt, had a huge impact for him, but also myself and my gym. Francis being world champion means that I’m a champion coach and that means the MMA Factory is a champion training camp. We missed that because he did not follow the game plan. He followed the game plans until the title shot and then the next fight, he was in Syndicate MMA.
“When all these people are saying what a bad coach I am, it would’ve been nice for Francis to back me up and say ‘No guys, this guy did his job, this guy tried to help me with the best game plan that he could and he gave me the thing that I should do and I didn’t do that.
Instead of saying that, he just stayed quiet and people were killing us saying how stupid could I be to just keep training Francis on the feet and not on the wrestling and not the ground game.
“This is just crazy because the MMA Factory was building Francis a lot time ago and for this and the wrestling and the ground game was taking almost 80-percent of his training, but because whenever the television come in the gym we were showcasing everything on the pads because it looked good for TV. We didn’t show Francis struggling or sharing the thing that he’s working on, on the ground. We only just showed to everyone what he was good at so they didn’t see any weakness in Francis, but actually, we were working so hard. We were taking all the best ground game guys in France.
“We lost the fight as a team, as a team, we lost the fight,” Lopez concluded. “There’s a fault of mine in losing the Stipe fight because it’s the team losing the fight. I don’t want to say only Francis lost that fight, but Francis didn’t follow the game plan, and it was up to himself to say he didn’t follow the game plan.”
What do you make of Fernand Lopez’s comments about Francis Ngannou?
