Dana White’s relationship with Francis Ngannou has always been a rocky one, and ahead of UFC 305 this past Saturday, the promotion seemingly cut Ngannou’s name out of the UFC 305 countdown video which didn’t sit well with Israel Adesanya.
At one point, the UFC donned three champions from Africa in Israel Adesanya, Kamaru Usman, and Francis Ngannou, but things went from bad to worse as Usman and Adesanya lost their titles and Ngannou left the promotion.
A few months prior to UFC 305, Adesanya and Dricus Du Plessis took part in an on-sale press conference in which Adesanya commented on the history of African champions, mentioning Ngannou.
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| Photo by Cooper Neill/Zuffa LLC |
Dana White was unaware of the promotion cutting out Ngannou’s name
During UFC 305 fight week, the UFC posted their UFC 305 countdown video in which they used the clip of the former middleweight champion talking about the history of African champions, however, they removed Ngannou’s name from their version of the video.
‘The Last Stylebender’ made it extremely clear at the UFC 305 media day that he wasn’t happy with the promotion for erasing Ngannou’s name from the promotion, stating that ‘you can never erase Francis’ history from the UFC’.
Following another week of Dana White’s Contender Series this past Tuesday evening, the UFC boss was asked about the decision to remove ‘The Predator’s’ name from the promotion, to which he was confused about and didn’t know it had happened.
“If that’s true (that we removed his name) and that was done and it was something we produced, then somebody in the company made that decision. Listen, you know me, if I said we did it, I’d say ‘Yeah f*** him this is why we did it’, I know nothing about it, nobody ever asked me about it and this is the first we’re hearing about it,” Dana White stated at the DWCS post-fight press conference.
Dana White takes responsibility for the removal of Ngannou’s name and apologizes
Despite the initial confusion, following the press conference White and his team discussed the matter and he issued another comment on it.
“My production team are a bunch of rock stars and they are truly f*cking awesome. I make it so hard on them sometimes with some of the crazy sh*t I say and it’s tough. When you (Kevin Iole) asked me about that, I didn’t know anything about it.
“But someone was editing that and made a conscious decision, thinking that was the right thing to do, that that’s what we would have wanted, what I would have wanted. I didn’t know about it and that was nothing that ever came across my desk.
I’m in charge of everything production-related, so at the end of the day, the fact it happened falls on me 100 percent. It’s my responsibility and I accept it. Blame me for that. But that’s on me. Totally on me. I already called Israel Adesanya and apologized for it,” White admitted.
- Jamie Theodosi
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