4 Best Opponents for Francis Ngannou's Next Fight | News, Scores, Highlights, Stats, and Rumors

As anyone who follows UFC will tell you, Ngannou never lost his octagonal title belt in the cage, instead having it stripped from him when his feud with Dana White over extracurricular ring activities finally got to a "don't go away mad, just go away" point last winter.

Jon Jones stepped into the breach last March and took out Ciryl Gane to scoop up Ngannou's discarded jewelry, but the attractiveness of a dream match between the two has never faded. After all, Jones is considered by many to be the greatest MMA fighter of all time, while Ngannou was climbing the all-time heavyweight ranks before his exit.

His signing a deal with the rival PFL organization probably KO's the idea that he'd ever return to a UFC cage, but it wouldn't be too hard to envision Jones and Ngannou going outside the sanctioning apparatus to stage a winner-take-all-type showdown in Riyadh or its environs.