“It Started at That Moment” Cristiano Ronaldo’s $200,000,000 Deal Credited for Francis Ngannou’s Million-Dollar Payday vs Tyson Fury as Per Ex-UFC Star

Francis Ngannou is gearing up for his boxing match against Tyson Fury in Saudi Arabia. Meanwhile, in a recent appearance on ‘The MMA Hour’, he mentioned how his relationship with the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia developed. It also included global soccer superstar and 5-time Ballon d’Or winner Cristiano Ronaldo.

When ‘The Predator’ left the UFC earlier this year, he caught up with Cristiano Ronaldo in Saudi Arabia, who joined Al-Nassr for a whopping $200 million deal. Ngannou visited the country for a mystery trip and that changed the whole scenario for his upcoming fight against Tyson Fury. Let us see what he had to say about that.

Francis Ngannou claims meeting Cristiano Ronaldo was the catalyst for the Tyson Fury fight

The former UFC heavyweight champion told Ariel Helwani that his visit to Saudi Arabia helped him secure a $10 million plus fight with ‘The Gypsy King’. He stated, “That’s [meeting Ronaldo] where the relationship [with Saudi Arabia] started… Yeah, it started at that moment.”

Francis Ngannou and football star Cristiano Ronaldo squared off for some memorable pictures. They were seen smiling and laughing in posts on each other’s Instagram pages, which kicked off talks between Ngannou and Saudi Arabian officials months later.

Moreover, during the talks for the fight against Tyson Fury, the coveted Wembley Stadium also came up during the conversation as a potential venue. However, Saudi Arabia showed genuine interest in hosting the fight and smoothened the process of making the fight a reality. Francis Ngannou added, “At some point when we were talking, he was like to make it in Wembley Stadium. But now, Saudi came out and wanted to do this fight and make everything easy. So why not?”

‘The Predator’ claims that Saudi Arabia impressed him

During his conversation with Ariel Helwani, Francis Ngannou showered a lot of praise for the Middle Eastern country. He claimed that the country proposed a lot of ideas and that impressed him a lot. The former UFC champion said, “They have a lot of vision, even for this fight. I was impressed to listen to them and see how they wanted to play it out.”

Tyson Fury has a great relationship with Saudi Arabia. They even hosted his brother, Tommy Fury‘s fight against Jake Paul in February, this year. Meanwhile, Francis Ngannou believes that his fight against ‘The Gypsy King’ might be a much bigger spectacle than what he had envisioned earlier. “This might be even bigger than what we thought.”

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Ngannou is reportedly going to make more money than he ever made during his time in the UFC. The fight will also be a professional bout and will go down in the official books. After all the problems with his UFC salary, the French-Cameroonian is finally in a place where he has the freedom to take control of his professional career.

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