Francis Ngannou says he wasn’t sure if he would fight again after son Kobe’s death

Francis Ngannou returned to the cage last weekend – 6 months after tragedy struck his family – and the combat sports superstar admits he wasn’t sure if he would ever fight again.

TMZ Sports spoke to the 38-year-old former UFC champ turned PFL boxer/fighter just days after he was sent Renan Ferreira via a first-round knockout in Saudi Arabia… then he broke down in tears after the fight while talking about the devastating loss of his little boy, Kobe.

“Oh, yes (I didn’t know if I would fight again). There was a moment where we didn’t know anything. Everything seemed so fragile,” Francis told us, adding that his mind was racing during that time. horrible time.

“You didn’t know if it was like some sort of genetic pandemic, genetic disease. You didn’t know if it was like a curse. If it was just bad luck, it was going to keep happening. It was a moment where, you know, , like a lot of things have been going on in your head, things that you don’t usually think about.”

Ngannou made the fight look easy… but mentally and emotionally, he says it was “by far the hardest” of his career.

Ultimately, when deciding when to return to the cage, Francis came to the conclusion that the pain would never go away…so there was nothing to look forward to.

“I didn’t feel like there was going to be a point where it would go away, where everything would be okay. It’s one of those things that you realize at the beginning that you better learn to adapt because that it will always be there.”