It should be noted that Francis Ngannou regularly mentions cryptocurrencies. In particular, there was a similar case in January 2022, when Ngannou was giving a press conference at UFC 270. At that time, he stated that he had become interested in crypto a year before and embarked on a detailed study of the niche. The fighter also said that he regretted interacting with the industry so late. Here is the relevant moment of the conversation.

In April, Ngannou met with Pascal Gauthier, the head of Ledger, a French company that makes hardware wallets, among others. A guide to coin-stacking with these devices is available here.

Francis Ngannou and Pascal Gauthier meet at the Bitcoin 2022 conference in Miami

How NFT tokens are making money

The hundreds of thousands of dollars in royalties from both the NFT and UFC didn’t come to Ngannou all of a sudden. He started working as a ten-year-old in sand mining in a small village in Cameroon. His family was poor and couldn’t afford even the most basic of expenses for Francis, so he worked at the same place until his late teens.

According to Coindesk sources, a career in the UFC didn’t become a benchmark for Ngannou until later when he was inspired by a video of boxer Mike Tyson. He went to France, and after a series of wanderings, the young fighter met a coach who convinced him to start a career in MMA. It’s all a major motif in Ngannou’s NFT collection, which saw the poor boy from Cameroon go from a gritty career to a UFC championship.

MMA fighter Francis Ngannou

The timing of the release of the "March to the Throne" NFT series and the terms of the token release were chosen to generate maximum hype among fans. The collection itself consists of two artworks. One called The Crowned King, or The Crowned King, exists in only one copy. The second is simply called Crowned and has been released in eleven copies.

The auction for NFT Ngannou would only have opened if the fighter had defeated Stipe Miocic on March 27, 2021. Ngannou did turn out to be the winner – at the end of the auction, the tokens sold out in a matter of minutes. To ensure the fairness of the process, the opportunity to purchase a series of Crowned works was conducted through a lottery scheme.

As you can see, the HYIP paid off: in just one day Francis Ngannou got both a UFC championship and a huge profit from his NFT-collection deal. A token in a single copy of The Crowned King was sold at auction for 158.4 ETH, or about $283,000 at the then exchange rate.

Tokens from Francis Ngannou’s NFT collection

Success in the field of unique tokens is a priority for UFC marketers. The sports organisation previously partnered with NFT startup Dapper Labs to launch the UFC Strike collection. Incidentally, a series of the most memorable knockouts also made it into the collection. Overall, the partnership between Dapper Labs and the UFC is part of a strategy to integrate crypto into the mixed martial arts world.

By the way, Dapper Labs is not the first organization from the cryptosphere to do business with the UFC. The Litecoin Foundation was a pioneer in the field. Back in 2018, the Litecoin logo was placed on the octagon canvas at UFC 232 as part of a sports event sponsorship deal.

Since then, several more sponsorship deals have been made. However, the most significant crypto sponsorship in mixed martial arts was a 10-year, $175 million deal between the UFC and cryptocurrency exchange Crypto.com. The deal was announced last July, giving Crypto.com extensive branding rights to fighter apparel and content.

UFC and Crypto.com partnership


We think a story like this can't help but be motivating. Still, at one time Francis Ngannou was working in his career and now his NFT is being bought for hundreds of thousands of dollars. And as he made clear during conferences, Ngannou is primarily attracted to the technology behind non-interchangeable tokens and other components of the blockchain world. So there's a chance that the fighter's success will be a reason for many of his fans to connect with the coins.