Francis Ngannou says he knows what to expect this time around when he embarks on his second professional boxing bout against Anthony Joshua at Kingdom Arena in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia on Friday night.
The 38-year-old Cameroonian made his pro debut last October when he faced WBC heavyweight champion Tyson Fury 34-0-1 (24) in a 10-round non-title bout. The former UFC heavyweight champion dropped the 35-year-old Brit heavily in the third round with a big left hook only to lose a razor-thin split decision.
Former two-time unified champion Joshua 27-3 (24) will present a different style, but Ngannou says he is ready for anything the 34-year-old Brit throws at him.
“In my honest opinion, the Tyson Fury fight was different,” said Ngannou, who has spent seven weeks in camp in Saudi Arabia.
“He was the first one, there was a lot of noise, Fury is very loud, there was a lot of curiosity. The boxing community was very loud about it and a lot of people didn’t believe [in] it, but now it seems like, ‘okay, it’s a normal fight’.”
Ngannou had always dreamed of becoming a boxer, well before he knew of MMA. He doesn’t have any plans to walk away from the sport right now.
“I’m not leaving boxing,” he said. “At the beginning it was boxing. I wasn’t aware of MMA and for more than a decade it was about boxing and dreaming about boxing and even when the opportunity came around, it was an opportunity for me to shine, to be a world champion and potentially do the crossover and go back to boxing because I feel it was something I needed to fulfil in order to be at peace with myself.
“In order to retire peacefully, I need to do that boxing because I just love it. I can’t tell you why, but I love it and I enjoy it.”
In just two fights Ngannou will have faced two of the three best big men on the planet, an extraordinary way for a boxing novice to begin their career.
Joshua has been accused of lacking confidence in the past, particularly in the wake of his losses to Andy Ruiz Jr and Oleksandr Usyk as he seemed to be searching of an in-ring identity, but his recent pairing with trainer Ben Davison appears to have gotten back to his brutal best.
Ngannou is expecting the best version of Joshua to show up on fight night.
“Things can happen in the fight, but you don’t go into a fight expecting a guy to lose confidence,” Ngannou said.
“When he’s an elite fighter, when he’s a professional, maybe from that lack of confidence, he has learned more and now has more confidence, because he gets experience from that, we all learn from our experience.”
