A surging Ngannou doesn’t even have a fight booked at the moment and the situation has left him frustrated with the UFC.
“They have to do something with me,” Ngannou told MMA Junkie. “OK, so what is that? I want the damn answer. I want to know what’s my position. I want to know what I’m doing here. I’m the No. 2 (heavyweight), and everyone is booked. I’m just here looking like, I don’t know, some guy desperate to get a fight. Actually, in my position, the only fight I’ll be running to is the title – but I don’t know if they want to make me run to any fight. Also, I wanted to fight before the end of the year. Like, it doesn’t matter who that is. I have to fight because I get that you guys don’t give much. But even though they don’t care, it’s kind of frustrating. Right now, it’s not something that I’m very happy to talk about. It’s been an exhausting process.”
The longest gap Ngannou has gone without fighting in the UFC is just under a year, as he didn’t compete between UFC On Fox 23 (January 2017) and UFC 218 (December 2017).
Ngannou knows there are some options out there, but one fighter the competitor would like to fight has allegedly turned down an opportunity to face him twice before.
“It’s very frustrating right now, and I kind of (have to) think what to do, what is possible,” Ngannou said. “The only guy in the top 10 that is available right now, as I saw, is Shamil (Abdurakhimov). But Shamil just lost against Curtis Blaydes. Curtis Blaydes doesn’t have a fight, and I fought him twice already. So it’s not some fight that I’m looking for. And that’s all. They said I could wait to see what’s going on Nov. 9, to see maybe if (Alexander) Volkov beats ‘JDS.’ But the problem – first of all, that’s not a fight I’m looking for. And second of all, Volkov turned this fight down twice. Why do I have to expect somebody to win a fight or don’t get hurt to accept the fight? ‘I don’t know.’ That was their answer: to wait and see, either in November or in December, to see if Volkov wins or if Walt Harris wins. Then we will see if they want to fight me if they are not injured.”
There is only fighter in the UFC Heavyweight Division that is ranked ahead of Ngannou and he isn’t booked for a fight at the moment, with that person being former two division UFC champion Daniel Cormier.
