The co-promoter of WBC heavyweight champion Tyson Fury 34-0-1 (24) insists they were always expecting a rough and tough fight from boxing debutant and former UFC heavyweight champion Francis Ngannou 0-1.
The 35-year-old Fury had to peel himself off the canvas in the third round to eke out a 10-round split decision win in their non-title bout by scores of 94-95, 95-94 and 96-93 at Boulevard Hall in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia on Saturday night.
“I’ve gotta be honest, I said all along that this fella’s strong, he’s a competitor — because I’ve looked at a lot of his fights that he had in the UFC — and he can punch,” Frank Warren said to Steve Bunce on the 5Live Boxing podcast.
“I thought he could never outbox Tyson and I expected Tyson to beat him but I thought it would be a rough, tough fight for him and if he catches him, he’ll go.
“The fella shaped up much, much better than I thought he would. Normally, MMA guys are a bit more square on. He actually shaped up really well.
“He gave Tyson the toughest fight he’s had, certainly in his last two fights. I thought he made more of a fight of it than Dillian [Whyte] or Derek Chisora. He’s just a real roughhouse fighter and as I was watching it I started thinking about a couple of fighters and what kind of problems he’d give.
“He’s come out of that with a lot of credibility, there’s no doubt about that. All these so called smartarses who were saying it was a gimmick or an exhibition, did that look like an exhibition?
“That was a tough fight. I thought he [Fury] won it, I thought he won by three rounds at least on punches landed and so forth. Especially the later rounds he was catching him a lot with his jab.”
The unexpected competitive nature of the fight, combined with a cut sustained over Fury’s left eye early in the contest, has pushed back the proposed four-belt unification bout with WBA, WBO, IBF and Ring Magazine champion Oleksandr Usyk 21-0 (14) until next year.
“Usyk got in the ring afterwards. That fight was signed and we were gonna do it on 23rd December,” Warren said.
“I doubt that will happen now because Tyson can’t be going into a camp after a tough fight like that having a week off.
“That’s eight weeks away. He needs a bit of time to get his body back into shape and let it heal before he gets back into camp. It’ll be on early next year.
“Riyadh Season finishes in March. It could be up until then.
“I told him to [have a rest]. He wanted to fight. I said, ‘Just go and have a break. You don’t have to make no decisions tonight. You do it to your agenda, not to everybody else’s.’”
