Francis Ngannou has described the last four months as a ‘nightmare’ since his involvement in a fatal motorcycle crash earlier this year.
In April, the former UFC heavyweight champion struck down a 17-year-old girl, Ntsama Brigitte Manuella, while riding through the streets of Yaounde, Cameroon.
The teenage girl broke her leg during the accident and was rushed to the hospital, where she passed away days later following surgery.
Ngannou had chosen to remain silent while he processed the grief, but during an appearance on the Ariel Helwani Show on Monday, the Cameroonian cage fighter spoke publicly for the first time.
“I was going by my mom’s place and I got 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. The 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 lying on the floor. I parked my motorcycle, went there, carried her, put her in the taxi, and then followed 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. I 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?’
“So, now over sleepless nights, dealing with all this, thinking of what you could have done, or should have done, how could you, what would you have done to avoid that, it’s a really bad feeling.”
The devastating incident came one year after the tragic passing of Ngannou’s 15-month-old son, Kobe, due to a brain malformation.
Ngannou used that experience to help him fight for the young girl, urging medical staff to undergo an MRI and check for internal bleeding.
He also paid for her medical expenses and visited the family several times.
Ngannou recalled: “They (Manuella’s family) even say, ‘Okay, we know that he was in the accident, but we saw how you fight for our daughter’.”
When is Francis Ngannou returning to combat sports?
The 38-year-old hasn’t competed in combat sports since last October, when he knocked out Renan Ferreira for the PFL Super Fights heavyweight title.
It marked his first fight in MMA in two years after a pair of defeats in the squared circle against Tyson Fury and Anthony Joshua.
Ngannou is now expected to return to boxing, with ‘The Predator’ suggesting that he expects to square off against Deontay Wilder this year.