The main thing for Fury is coming through what ought to be an exhibition with no alarms, paving the way for a date with Usyk. At a public workout in Saudi this week, Fury looked to be working on his speed with observers left unimpressed by Ngannou’s laboured efforts.ĭewey Cooper and Mike Tyson have been training Ngannou during a 14-week camp, with Tyson telling Telegraph Sport that his strategy against Fury would have been to “stay close, attack the body, and punch upwards.” In the words of Fury: “It’s like a table tennis champion facing Djokovic in the Wimbledon final, totally different.”įury has taken his preparation seriously, sparring with the likes of Joseph Parker (who fights on tonight’s undercard) at his training base in Morecambe. Ngannou weighed in at 272.1 lbs to Fury’s 277.7 lbs in Saudi Arabia on Friday, and is in entirely uncharted territory. The French-Cameroonian fighter has enough power in his right hand to give him the faintest of chances, but that depends on getting around Fury’s jab, something even seasoned boxers struggle to do. Ngannou, who is entering the ring for the first time in a professional boxing match under rules, has no right to get near an operator of Fury’s class but could offer the virtue of surprise. Good evening and welcome to our live coverage of Tyson Fury’s 10-round contest with former mixed martial arts star and UFC champion Francis Ngannou.įury’s WBC heavyweight world title is not on the line for what is expected to be a fairly routine warm-up exercise, before a potential unification bout against Oleksandr Usyk in December. This was clearly an under par Fury, who is expected to meet Oleksandr Usyk on Dec 23 back in Saudi Arabia for all the heavyweight belts. On the eye test, it was Ngannou’s night, with Fury admitting he was disappointed. ‘One of my toughest fights in the last 10 years’įury claimed victory by split decision by judges’ cards of 96-93 and 95-94, with one judge returning 95-94 for Ngannou. All those aspects were dismissed leading into the fight. What was clear, however, was the strength of Ngannou, his punch resistance, and his fitness. Ngannou also came on strong with a combination and assault in the eighth round, which he won convincingly, with Fury - expectedly - outboxing his foe in all but one of the other rounds. Fury, looking shocked, regained his feet to face a now aggressive Ngannou, but the attacks were thwarted by the right hand of the ‘Gypsy King’. ‘The Battle of the Baddest’ had kick-started the Riyadh Season, one of the world’s leading entertainment festivals, which runs throughout the winter months in Saudi Arabia’s largest city.īut if the event needed drama, it came in the eighth minute, when Ngannou, already proving a strong foe for the unbeaten Fury, took his moment. Indeed, when Ngannou dropped Fury with a left hand in the third round, there was an audible gasp of shock in the arena and it sustained the Cameroonian for much of the contest, and put Fury on alert for the rest of the non-title contest that the pre-fight predictions of Ngannou’s “puncher’s chance” actually counted for rather a lot. Yet in fighting terms, this was not his first rodeo. This was some shock as Ngannou matched the heavyweight world champion, proving the naysayers wrong and showing that his boxing skills were far better than expected in his first outing in a new martial art at the Kingdom Arena in Riyadh. Tyson Fury overcame a third-round knockdown and narrowly avoided falling to a seismic upset as he prevailed in a 10-round split-decision victory over former UFC heavyweight champion Francis Ngannou – a man who had never boxed before. By Gareth A Davies, Boxing Correspondent, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia
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