MMA Business and Politics Robbed Us of Jon Jones vs. Francis N’Gannou

There seems to be this narrative going around that Francis N’Gannou fled to PFL from Jon Jones because he was “scared” of Jones. There’s also the similar narrative that Jon Jones waited until N’Gannou was gone for him to move up to heavyweight because he was “scared” of Francis N’Gannou. Both of these are ridiculous and we saw at PFL last night that neither Jones nor N’Gannou were scared of each other.

Jon Jones and Francis Ngannou meet face-to-face…

Jones: “You know you don’t want no smoke” 👀 pic.twitter.com/dFPN9Hu2JX

— MMAFighting.com (@MMAFighting) June 17, 2023

There stands Jones, the man N’Gannou is allegedly scared of. But it’s Francis N’Gannou stands before him smiling and confident like he has nuclear war heads in his hands or something. Conversely, Jon Jones, the man who should cower in front of the power and might of Francis N’Gannou, telling him to his face that he “don’t want no smoke.” It’s almost like neither Jones nor N’Gannou are scared of each other. Instead, we the fans are robbed, yet again, of a mega fight due to business, politics or both.

Francis N’Gannou vs. Jon Jones: The new Silva vs. GSP

Everyone talks about how the UFC bungled the Jon Jones-Francis N’Gannou fight.

I’m over here remembering

Dom Cruz vs. Jose Aldo
GSP vs. Silva
Silva vs. Jon Jones
Bisping vs. Yoel

— Blaine Henry (@BlaineHenryTFL) March 27, 2023

I talked about this in March on Twitter. Jon Jones vs. Francis N’Gannou is one of a list of fights that we missed out on. Dominick Cruz vs. Jose Aldo, Anderson Silva vs. Jon Jones, Michael Bisping vs. Yoel Romero, Demetrious Johnson vs. TJ Dillashaw, and the most important one of all: Georges St-Pierre vs. Anderson Silva. All of these were lost for one reason or another but one thing is for sure, Jon Jones and Francis N’Gannou is the largest of all these with the exception of GSP and Silva.

Politics and corruption have been a part of boxing for decades. I’ve often said that politics and corruption are what holds the sport back in the eyes of most fans. It took us forever to get Crawford and Spence to box. The UFC, and MMA for that matter, have been relatively clean when it comes to giving us the good stuff.

This year we got a top two pound for pound matchup with Alexander Volkanovski and Islam Makhachev. We were treated to Khabib Nurmagomedov vs. Conor McGregor. GSP vs. BJ Penn, Daniel Cormier vs. Stipe Miocic, there has been tons of fights that we got in MMA that we would never get in boxing without a decade of buildup (I’m looking at you Mayweather-Pacquiao).

But the business side of MMA got in the way of this one. The Moby Dick of fights. The one that got away. There is still time for this to happen, but Jones has been talking retirement and N’Gannou’s deal with the PFL is a multi year, multi fight contract. It got away. Like Arlovski vs. Fedor…