“Fernand’s problem is that he wants to be famous,” Francis Ngannou reveals the root cause of the dispute between him and his former coach Fernand Lopez

“Fernand’s problem is that he wants to be famous,” Francis Ngannou reveals the root cause of the dispute between him and his former coach Fernand Lopez

Francis Ngannou on Fernand Lopez

Francis Ngannou started his MMA journey at MMA Factory Paris under the guidance of his former coach Fernand Lopez. The duo fell apart after Ngannou lost two straight fights and became a member of Xtreme Couture in Las Vegas.

Now that Lopez’s other student Ciryl Gane has become the interim heavyweight champion, the relationship between him and Ngannou has been under the spotlight, and Fernand stated that it was Ngannou’s ego and his unwillingness to listen that caused the problem.

Now Ngannou has spoken about this, and he has claimed that Lopez always wanted the spotlight, and that is just impossible. In an interview with GQ, he said, “Fernand’s problem is that he wants to be famous. I can count how many times we had to argue about how he thought I was taking all the spotlight. … Bro, what do you want? If you want the spotlight, you know where the spotlight is. It’s inside the octagon, not on the side. And you chose to be on the side. I don’t know how to.”

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He added, “If you want to be a coach, you have to stand where the coach stands and get what the coach gets. You can’t be a coach and get what the fighter gets. It has always been like that. He mentions how many followers I have on Instagram compared to him. I’m not worried about followers on Instagram. I wish I could throw some to you, but I can’t do that. This has always been a problem, basically.”

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“Sometimes when I hear them talk about the stories, I don’t recognize myself in it,” Francis Ngannou on the narrative provided by Fernand Lopez

Francis Ngannou
Francis Ngannou

Lopez has talked about Ngannou on several occasions, and Ngannou stated that he is giving out a false narrative, “Sometimes when I hear them talk about the stories, I don’t recognize myself in it. Are you sure you’re talking about me and not somebody else? The way that they’re talking, I heard that we were training before Alistair Overeem. That was two years before I even knew Gane. That’s just not true.”

“That’s something I’m very cool with. We trained for about one month back in January 2019, when I was going to fight Junior Dos Santos. Technically we don’t know each other that much.”

Also read- “The real belt is at home, not the one that they bought at Walmart,” Francis Ngannou takes a shot at Ciryl Gane’s interim-heavyweight belt