Former UFC heavyweight champion Francis Ngannou scored him some autographed swag after having dinner with soccer icon Cristiano Ronaldo.
In Riyadh, Saudi Arabia to absorb Saturday’s extremely anticipated rematch between Oleksandr Usyk and Tyson Fury at Kingdom Enviornment, Ngannou revealed in a social media publish that he not solely had dinner with Ronaldo but additionally walked away with a handful of autographed jerseys courtesy of ‘CR7.’
Earlier this 12 months, Ronaldo sat cageside on the PFL Battle of the Giants pay-per-view to witness Ngannou’s long-awaited return to blended martial arts towards heavyweight knockout artist Renan Ferreira.
Ronaldo Supplied Francis Ngannou a couple of phrases of encouragement forward of PFL debut
Based on Ngannou’s coach Eric Nicksick, ‘El Bicho’ was sitting backstage at one level and insisted on giving ‘The Predator’ a couple of phrases of encouragement simply earlier than he made his solution to the Sensible Cage.
“He was so cool and super down to earth,” Nicksick advised MMA Junkie. “He was a brilliant cool man and really an enormous combating fan, so he had a bunch of questions, he was speaking to me about [Sean] Strickland, this and that, no matter combat it was. He was actually all the way down to earth after which at one level Francis received as much as wrap his fingers, and Ronaldo was sort of speaking about how he may really feel Francis’ power, and he goes, ‘I’m simply going to provide him phrases of encouragement…’
“He was talking about the loss of one of his children and kind of how he related to that and things like that. It was kind of cool. I know how big of a star he is, but sitting next to me and having this very personal conversation made him feel like he was part of the team right then and there. His son was in there with us and hanging out so it was a very much welcomed energy to have in the room. Especially someone of that stature who understands the highest of pressure, so it was cool and he was a great guy” (h/t Bloody Elbow).
Ngannou ended up scoring a dominant first-round TKO towards Ferreria in his PFL debut — an particularly spectacular feat when you think about that he hadn’t competed inside a cage in almost three years.
What’s subsequent for Ngannou stays to be seen, however ‘The Predator’ has left the door open for a return to boxing regardless of going 0-2 with back-to-back losses towards Tyson Fury and Anthony Joshua.
