Francis Ngannou has done his best to enjoy his breaks between fights, but recent years haven't been kind to "The Predator." In April, Ngannou was visiting his home in Cameroon when tragedy struck yet again.
One night during the visit, Ngannou got into a motorcycle crash with a 17-year-old woman, Ntsama Brigitte Manuella, that resulted in a broken leg before she was taken to the hospital for treatment. The former UFC heavyweight champion has remained relatively silent about the incident in recent months. Unfortunately, Manuella died days later, following her surgery in the same Cameroon hospital.
Speaking on Monday's edition of "The Ariel Helwani Show," Ngannou opened up for the first time about what happened. Ngannou said he was driving his motorcycle around 7 p.m. when the accident occurred.
"I was going by my mom's place and I get to this, it was like on the boulevard, and I saw this girl trying to cross the street," Ngannou said, "but I noticed that she didn't look, because I saw her and it was like a three-way lane side of road, but I noticed that she didn't see. I wanted to go behind her because she was walking fast. Problem is that last minute she turned around and she saw me and she froze there. I had a few seconds, and I hit her with the left side of my motorcycle because I was almost passed, and I was like 300 yards away from a police station. I didn't even fall off the motorcycle, but she fell, so I'm like, 'Should I go report this?' But she's laying on the floor. I parked my motorcycle, go there, carry her, put her in the taxi, and then follow her to the hospital. We get in the hospital. I took her outside. She has a tibia fracture, but I took her out of the car, and she was aware now and in pain, which was a good sign.
"I took her to the emergency room. They reassured me everything is good, but I still stayed there for like two hours until people came. ... I left, was reassured that everything was good. I mean, not 'good' because she's hurt, but I'm like, 'Oh, it wasn't the worst. It could have been worse than this.' And every day they were telling me, I was having the follow-up like, 'Oh, she's good.' Because the same night, her family came there, and she was good for the next two days, and they were prepping her surgery. She went for the surgery and never woke up. And just like that [she died]. I'm like, 'How come? What's happened?'"
Ngannou, 38, battled a tremendous loss last year when his 15-month-old son Kobe passed away due to a brain malformation. Despite the tragedy, the experience aided in how Ngannou approached the handling of his motorcycle accident, recalling instances when his son was undergoing treatment.
"When I get to the hospital, I requested two things right away. I said, 'Please, can you do a scan to verify if she does have like internal bleeding?'" Ngannou recalled. "Because at that moment, I don't know if you remember, but it was like almost exactly 10 days away from the one-year anniversary of Kobe. And what I did find out is that Kobe had a brain issue. When we went to the hospital, they do the scan, but not the MRI. The MRI could have detected what he had. So, on this girl, I'm like, 'Please do the brain MRI.'
"I'm sure that everything is being taken care of. I have a follow-up every day. We don't have any concern about internal bleeding. We don't have any concern about a concussion or something. Then I think this was the third day already — the third day after the surgery, they were like, 'It's over.' How come it is over? What's over? What do you mean it's over? That was it. From the fracture. That was it."
Ngannou said there is no evidence he can share of anything in particular going awry, but the former champion believes something "had to happen" in the hospital. Emotionally, the piling on has started to make Ngannou feel cursed. There have been many sleepless nights and contemplations since about what he could've changed to prevent the accident. Ngannou said he's still dealing with "bad feelings" internally.
Ultimately, Ngannou never expected the worst possible outcome to occur and was entirely concerned with doing everything he could to help Manuella and her family.
"We reached out because we were in touch, and their family was there," he said. "They knew that I was part of the accident, so we reached out and started to talk. I talked to the family, and obviously, they were grieving. They even said, 'OK, we know that it happened. It's an accident, but we saw how you fought for our daughter. We saw all the assistance that was there.' So, I mean, they thanked me for assisting them. Like somebody would have hit and run, but I didn't. We shared about everything that happened. But again, that might have been a little bit, but not too much, basically, at that moment."
"What I was worried about [before she passed away], I'm like, 'OK, where is she living? With who? What's her job? How can you assist her for a day-to-day comeback?'" Ngannou continued. "Because yes, it wasn't worse, but she still had a tibia fracture, which is going to be like maybe nine months or one year of rehab. So, what can we do? What can I do to assist her and make her life happen during this process? That's where I was. I was planning the rehab stuff, how could this work for her? I have no idea that I will be dealing with the death. No idea, far from my mind.
"You think about it, say, 'OK, we're just going to find her a good physio, assist her. She's definitely going to be on the wheelchair or something like that. She's going to need assistance for every day.' That's where I was at. I'm like, 'OK, let's see how.' I tell my team, let's see how you can make that happen, because that's what is needed right now. We didn't know that we would be talking about funeral communities after that."
Ngannou last fought when he made his PFL debut in October 2024, stopping Renan Ferreira with strikes in Round 1. It was his first MMA fight in nearly three years. He has one more MMA fight left on his contract with the promotion.
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