Francis Ngannou Claims Sparring Clips with Ciryl Gane Were Edited to ‘Make Me Look Bad’

Two former teammates on a collision course.

Will we see Ciryl Gane and Francis Ngannou going at it for real in the Octagon? pic.twitter.com/3EUOQG7vHJ

— UFC on BT Sport (@btsportufc) June 28, 2021

Francis Ngannou says the footage of him and Ciryl Gane sparring that was released earlier this year was edited with a specific goal in mind.

According to Ngannou, the clips don’t accurate depict what happened during the session, which occurred in January 2019. Ngannou and Gane will meet in a heavyweight title unification bout at UFC 270 at the Honda Center in Anaheim on Jan. 22. According to Ngannou, he and Gane sparred no more than six to eight times total.

“When I saw that footage, my first reaction was laughing – because I know exactly what happened at those training sessions,” Ngannou said on his YouTube channel. “But this is the thing: When they want do some highlight, they always choose the part of the video that they use and they have a lot of videos like that because at the time, they were filming our training sessions to promote him, his fight and everything. So there was a lot of footage from those few training sessions, but a lot of them never came out and will never come out, and I know for a fact that they will never come out.

“It’s about to make him look better and make me look bad – to prove that he’s the man. I really get intrigued by (that) stuff sometimes and then how they just control people’s mind, conditioning them to think – and suddenly they just shift from one way to other way of thinking. And I’m like, how easy is that to manipulate people? … They’re really good at manipulation. But at the end of the day, as I said, we both know. Everyone knows for a fact.”

The implication is that the footage was released by Ngannou’s former gym, Factory MMA. The reigning heavyweight king left the Paris-based camp to train in the United States at Xtreme Couture, and since then, there seems to be some animosity between Ngannou and his former coach, Fernand Lopez. More recently, a video of Ngannou snubbing Gane and Lopez backstage at UFC 268 brought the rift back to the forefront ahead of the title fight.

Even with all that, Ngannou doesn’t deny that Gane, who captured the interim belt with a victory against Derrick Lewis in August, is extremely talented.

“I can’t lie to you that Ciryl doesn’t have skills … He’s good and he’s just going to get better,” Ngannou said. “He’s good. He’s talented, that’s for sure, and that’s the reason why he’s there, where he’s at. Right now? I’m just better, man, I’m just the man that’s going to stop the hype, and I can’t wait to get to this fight because what’s really funny about this is everybody that talks about this fight hypes him up.”