A fully clothed Tyson Fury was nearly 10 pounds heavier Friday night than he was when the unbeaten WBC heavyweight champion weighed in for his last fight.
The 6-foot-9 Fury stepped on the scale at 277.7 pounds for his 10-round, non-title fight against Francis Ngannou on Saturday night at Kingdom Arena in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. The 6-foot-4 Ngannou came in at 272.1 pounds, 7.1 pounds more than he was allowed to weigh for his UFC bouts.
Fury (33-0-1, 24 KOs) officially weighed 268¾ pounds for his last fight, a 10th-round stoppage of England’s Dereck Chisora (34-13, 23 KOs) last December 3 at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium in London.
Fury, of Morecambe, England, is a 20-1 favorite, according to FanDuel sportsbook. Ngannou, a native of Cameroon who is 17-3 (12 KOs) as a mixed martial artist, will make his professional boxing debut.
The pay-per-view bout between Fury, 35, and Ngannou, 37, will not count on their records.
If Fury wins and escapes unscathed Saturday night, his 12-round title unification fight with Oleksandr Usyk will likely be announced in the ring for December 23 at Kingdom Arena in Riyadh. Ukraine’s Usyk (21-0, 14 KOs) will be ringside for Fury-Ngannou.
The winner between Fury and Usyk, who owns the IBF, IBO, WBA and WBO titles, will be crowned the first fully unified heavyweight champion of the four-belt era.
The official weights for the four heavyweight fights on the pay-per-view portion of the Fury-Ngannou undercard and one non-televised contest are listed below.
TNT Sports Box Office (£21.95)
7 p.m. BST
ESPN Pay-Per-View ($79.99)
2 p.m. EDT; 11 a.m. PDT
Fabio Wardley (16-0, 15 KOs), Ipswich, England, 241 pounds vs. David Adeleye (12-0, 11 KOs), London, 232 pounds, 12 rounds, heavyweights.
Joseph Parker (32-3, 22 KOs), South Auckland, New Zealand, 250.1 pounds vs. Simon Kean (23-1, 22 KOs), Trois-Rivieres, Quebec, Canada, 255.1 pounds, 10 rounds, heavyweights.
Arslanbek Makhmudov (17-0, 16 KOs), Montreal, 260 pounds vs. Junior Anthony Wright (20-4-1, 17 KOs), Evanston, Illinois, 229.5 pounds, 10 rounds, heavyweights.
Moses Itauma (5-0, 3 KOs), Chatham, England, 236.1 pounds vs. Istvan Bernath (10-1, 8 KOs), Szeged, Hungary, 257.1 pounds, 6 rounds, heavyweights.
Non-televised
Carlos Takam (40-7-1, 28 KOs), Douala, Cameroon, 257.1 pounds vs. Martin Bakole (19-1, 14 KOs), Airdrie, Scotland, 299.4 pounds, 10 rounds, heavyweights.
Keith Idec is a senior writer/columnist for BoxingScene.com. He can be reached on Twitter @Idecboxing.