The beef between Francis Ngannou and former coach Fernand Lopez continues to grow.
The UFC heavyweight champion Francis Ngannou has a date set to defend his title against his old training partner Ciryl Gane. The matchup is arguably one of the most anticipated heavyweight title fights in a long time. Now, the growing animosity between Ngannou and Gane’s head coach Fernand Lopez is adding even more drama to this bout.
Recently, Lopez set forth some heavy claims that accused Ngannou of trying to keep Gane out of the UFC. Ngannou was also the target of some released footage that showed Ngannou and Gane training together.
The Cameroonian was unhappy with the clip that was released and called it misleading. According to Lopez, however, Ngannou could have been made to look much worse. And now, he is willing to release the entire length of training footage.
“That footage didn’t tell the whole story of what happened in training,” Lopez told Low Kick MMA. “There were so many opportunities where they got the better of each other in sparring, so we couldn’t have manipulated the footage. He didn’t want me to release the whole footage because, in that specific training, Francis Ngannou ate a knee shot to the liver and got dropped. Stopped the whole training. These are facts. Francis was on his backside. If he’s saying this isn’t true, I’ll release the whole footage. But, my content manager didn’t want to release it because we have privacy in the gym. When guys train in your gym, they expect things to stay in the gym.”
Ngannou and Gane trained together at MMA Factory in France before Ngannou left. Lopez, now the head coach of Gane, has expressed his problems with Nagnnou in a public capacity. In return, Ngannou publically ignored them while both were backstage at UFC 268 in New York.
Everything will soon enough be settled inside the Octagon. The real fight will be taking place on Jan. 22 at UFC 270. At that time, all sparring footage will become obsolete and the truly better man and fighter will be crowned as the UFC heavyweight champion.
Do you think Francis Ngannou has what it takes to defeat Ciryl Gane at UFC 270?