{"id":229728,"date":"2017-03-26T08:17:54","date_gmt":"2017-03-26T15:17:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/staging.tcpcharms.com\/bjpenn\/?p=229728"},"modified":"2017-04-14T13:31:28","modified_gmt":"2017-04-14T20:31:28","slug":"francis-ngannou-happy-share-prey-fabricio-werdum-luke-rockhold","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/staging.tcpcharms.com\/bjpenn\/mma-news\/francis-ngannou\/francis-ngannou-happy-share-prey-fabricio-werdum-luke-rockhold\/","title":{"rendered":"Francis Ngannou happy to share his “prey” Fabricio Werdum with Luke Rockhold"},"content":{"rendered":"

Shortly after his thunderous, first-round knockout of Andrei Arlovski, rising heavyweight contender Francis Ngannou issued callouts of three of the division’s top fighters<\/a>: Cain Velasquez<\/a>, Junior Dos Santos<\/a>, and Alistair Overeem. Yet when\u00a0Ben Rothwell was forced out of a scheduled bout with Brazil’s Fabricio Werdum<\/a>, leaving Werdum without an opponent, the Brazilian became Ngannou’s primary target.<\/p>\n

Ngannou has some competition in his quest for a fight with Werdum<\/a>. That competition comes from an unlikely source in former middleweight champion Luke Rockhold, who has beef with Werdum stemming from their days fighting under the Strikeforce banner.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have an old Strikeforce beef,” Rockhold said on a recent episode of MMAJunkie Radio. “Fabricio didn\u2019t really have respect for people at the time, I think it was in St. Louis. I\u2019m not going to get into it, throw him under the bus too bad, but he pretty much was being a piece of shit that night and I demanded some respect. I was a young Strikeforce challenger at the time. And he was like, \u2018Who the fuck are you?\u2019 And he treated me like a piece of shit. He was just being a dick and I stood up or myself and he tried to act like I was being the bad guy. And ever since, he just kind of said some shit and I don\u2019t rally have respect for the guy. I respect him as a fighter, he\u2019s tough and he lays it out there. He\u2019s earned respect in that manner, but outside of that, meh. I\u2019d fight him in a heartbeat. I think I\u2019d beat him, too. Easy.\u201d<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

While it’s hard to say if a Rockhold-Werdum fight will ever be booked, Ngannou recently took to Twitter to explain that he wouldn’t be too upset it if did. The rising heavyweight’s Tweets on the subjected prompted a response from Rockhold. See the pair’s exchange below.<\/p>\n

\n

@fabriciowerdum<\/a> is trippin if he thinks hes close to UFC title. U r the last person they want n there. I'll make u look worse than usada did<\/p>\n

— Luke Rockhold (@LukeRockhold) March 23, 2017<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n