Battered Fury Blames Ring Rust For Ngannou Fight

Appearing on camera with a black eye, Fury laid out his thoughts on a tough fight against Ngannou.

While Tyson Fury may have won the Battle of the Baddest against Francis Ngannou in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, it was an extremely close split decision. When you’re fighting an MMA fighter with zero professional or amateur boxing experience, that’s as bad as a loss to many fans. So Fury is currently being hammered with questions on what went wrong.

There’s speculation that Fury didn’t take his camp seriously, or that he had too many ‘yes men’ around him. Asked if any of that played a part, “The Gyspy King” shut the conspiracies down.

“No, no, you can’t take anything away from Francis Ngannou, he was a good fighter and he gave me a very good fight and that was it,” Fury told Boxing King Media. “I trained very well, I prepared very good, and I didn’t have any excuses or anything. It’s boxing. Some days you have good days and some days you don’t and you crack on and you continue. Keep moving forward.”

“Usually when you get the media saying it’s a mismatch, it’s not worth watching, and all that, usually you’re in for a tough night. If I wouldn’t have trained as hard as I did, I probably wouldn’t have gotten through that fight.”

Fury has said he spent 12 weeks in training camp, partially because he took Ngannou seriously as an opponent and partially because he was supposed to fight Oleksandr Usyk to unify the heavyweight belts on December 23rd. What affected him, in Tyson’s opinion, was too much time away from competing.

“I felt my timing was quite off,” he said. “I’ve been out the ring nearly a year again. A little bit of ring rust. It was what it was. It was far from one of my best performances, it wasn’t a vintage Tyson Fury, but you do what you got to do in there and get through and on to the next one.”

“I don’t know about a bad night because that’s taking it away from Francis Ngannou’s performance. He did very well, and that’s it really. It’s boxing. You can’t be the very best version of yourself every time, but it’s about keep going and onto the next which is Oleksandr Usyk for the undisputed championship.”

Asked if he had suffered any serious injuries in the fight, Fury said no.

“Just some surface bruising, really,” he said. “There was a bit of a head clash in there and obviously there’s a couple of punches as well. Nothing major. No serious injury.”

He left the possibility of a December fight with Usyk open, but also suggested he’d disappear from the limelight until 2024.

“I don’t know, I’m just going to leave it to the guys who are promoting it and putting the event on, you know?” he said about the undisputed heavyweight title fight. “Just going to go back now, take a rest, and get back in the gym.”

“I’ll see you all sometime next year,” he said, wrapping the interview up. “Have a good Christmas if I don’t see you, and a happy New Year!”