Francis Ngannou knew he had to knock out Tyson Fury to win their 10-round, non-title fight Saturday night.
The former UFC heavyweight champion wasn’t naïve about the situation. The same Saudi investors have fully funded the Fury-Ngannou and Fury-Oleksandr Usyk events, yet Ngannou was well aware that upsetting Fury would’ve severely damaged the marketability of his title unification fight versus Usyk, which was planned for December 23 before Fury struggled against Ngannou.
England’s Fury (34-0-1, 24 KOs) and Ukraine’s Usyk (21-0, 14 KOs) signed contracts before Fury fought Ngannou, which placed plenty of pressure on Fury and further incentivized Ngannou to knock out the heavily favored, undefeated WBC champion.
Cameroon’s Ngannou, who floored Fury with a left hook late in the third round, believes he did enough to defeat Fury, who won a split decision. Ngannou also admitted, however, that he realized before he entered the ring at Kingdom Arena in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia that, no matter how well he fought, he wouldn’t win their pay-per-view main event by decision.
“If he was being honest, he would say I won that fight,” Ngannou told ESPN’s Brett Okamoto after his close loss. “I won that fight. There’s not a question about it. But, you know, and even before getting here I knew. I knew like if this fight get to a decision, I’m not winning. Not because I didn’t do good, because I’m the new guy in the house. I come here and I just wanna kick into people’s business. I know there’s a structured business out there, and you need to do a lot to destroy it. … I wasn’t expecting to just win like that [by] decision. But, you know, it is what it is. I do my job. I know that I did everything that I could’ve done. I did my best. Maybe next time I should just do better to convince people more.”
The 37-year-old Ngannou did enough to convince judge Ed Garner, who scored him a 95-94 winner. Garner gave Ngannou and Fury five rounds apiece, but Ngannou’s knockdown accounted for the difference on Garner’s card.
The other two judges – Juan Carlos Pelayo (96-93) and Alan Krebs (95-94) – scored seven and six rounds for Fury, respectively.
The 6-foot-9, 277¾-pound Fury carefully approached the 6-foot-4, 272-pound Ngannou after the knockdown, but he used his jab well at times to win rounds thereafter.
Pelayo scored six of the final seven rounds for Fury, who won four of the last six rounds on Garner’s card. Krebs credited Fury for winning four of the final seven rounds.
“I came here tonight to win,” Ngannou said. “I’m going back without that victory, which is not what I was looking for. I was really looking forward to win this fight. But I [did] learn a lot tonight about the sport. You know, this really [was] my first time to fight and to do like 10-round boxing match, straight boxing. And, you know, I can tell myself that I didn’t do bad against the number one heavyweight in the world.”
Keith Idec is a senior writer/columnist for BoxingScene.com. He can be reached on Twitter @Idecboxing.