Tyson Fury won’t try to excuse away his subpar performance Saturday night.
The undefeated Fury feels Francis Ngannou deserves full credit for testing him in their 10-round, non-title fight at Kingdom Arena in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. The WBC heavyweight champion insists that his split-decision win wasn’t the consequence of him taking Ngannou lightly.
In fact, Fury claimed he trained longer for his bout with Cameroon’s Ngannou, who made his boxing debut, than he did for fights with Deontay Wilder, Dillian Whyte and Dereck Chisora in recent years.
“I didn’t underestimate him,” Fury said during an interview with IFL TV on Monday. “I trained for 12 weeks, [gave] it the best preparation I could’ve done. And that’s it.”
The 6-foot-9 Fury weighed in at 277¾ pounds for his fight against Ngannou, which was his highest weight in almost 15 years as a pro. Fury weighed in with his clothes on, though, and was essentially the same weight he was when he viciously knocked out Wilder in the 11th round of their third title fight in October 2021 at T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas.
The 6-foot-4, 272-pound Ngannou was more refined than Fury and virtually everyone else expected, though. He dropped Fury with a counter left hook late in the third round, fought from a southpaw stance at times and surprisingly made their pay-per-view main event very competitive.
Cameroon’s Ngannou won by one point on the card of judge Ed Garner, who scored the former UFC heavyweight champ a 95-94 winner. Judge Juan Carlos Pelayo (96-93) scored seven rounds for Fury, who won six rounds according to judge Alan Krebs (95-94).
Fury realizes, however, that he wasn’t sharp against a novice that FanDuel sportsbook made him a 20-1 favorite to beat.
“It wasn’t the best performance, but I’m not gonna make any excuses,” Fury said. “I had a good camp. There was no one to blame or no one to do anything. It was a tough fight. I had to get off the floor to win and, yeah, no excuses.”
Morecambe’s Fury (34-0-1, 24 KOs) thought their fight would be easier, but he didn’t know what to make of Ngannou other than that he could punch hard.
“We didn’t know how good he was or how bad he was,” Fury said. “There was no footage of him, never seen the man fight before as a boxer. And that was it. So, he was a lot more awkward than I thought he’d be. And he wasn’t walking [into] me. He was an awkward man. He was good at what he was doing, so fair play to him. Don’t take anything away from him. He give me a better fight than all the boxers did in the last 10 years. I think that’s been me toughest fight I’ve had for years.”
A respectful Fury implored his critics to give Ngannou credit for fighting effectively versus an opponent he supposedly had no chance to beat.
“Yeah, it was a below-par performance,” Fury said, “but take nothing away from the other man. You’re only as good as your opponent will let you be, and that’s a fact.”
The 35-year-old Fury is just thankful that he edged Ngannou and can move forward with his 12-round title unification fight with IBF/IBO/WBA/WBO champ Oleksandr Usyk (21-0, 14 KOs) either December 23 or sometime early in 2024.
“If I would’ve listened to the media,” Fury said, “and all the so-called boxing experts, ‘Oh, it’s an easy fight. It’s a mismatch. It’s not worth watching,’ then I wouldn’t have been able to win that fight.”
Keith Idec is a senior writer/columnist for BoxingScene.com. He can be reached on Twitter @Idecboxing.