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

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

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

“Oh yes [I didn’t know if I’d fight again]. There was a point where you knew nothing. Everything seemed so fragile,” Francis told us, adding that his mind raced at a mile a minute during that horrific time.

“You didn’t know if it was some kind of genetic pandemic, a genetic disease. You didn’t know if it was a curse. If it was just bad luck, it would keep happening. There was a point where, you know, like a lot of things happened in your head, things you don’t normally think about.”

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

When Francis finally decided when to step back into the cage, he concluded that the pain would never go away… so there was nothing left to wait.

“I didn’t feel like there was going to be a time when it would go away, when it would be okay again. It’s one of those things where you realize in the beginning that you better learn to deal with it, because it’s so will be.” always be there.”