Francis Ngannou wants rematch with Tyson Fury

Former UFC heavyweight champion Francis Ngannou nearly defeated WBC boxing champion Tyson Fury in his boxing debut.  Now he wants a rematch.  

“The rematch is what I want next the most,” Ngannou told TMZ Sports.  “As for right now I feel like there’s a lot of options for me, but I want to chose wisely and I will go for the rematch first.” 

Ngannou fought Fury to a split decision leaving many believing that Ngannou should have had his hand raised.  A rematch seems inevitable.    

“Going into the first one, there was a lot of questions and a lot of uncertainty for boxing, but going into the second – I mean, even going through the training camp there was a lot of unknown, but I think this fight, from the beginning of the camp to leading up to the fight, I think that was a lot of experience that will definitely help me a lot for the second fight,” Ngannou said.  “Not to mention, this fight he was a lot mentally.  It was my first training camp since almost two years, my first fight since almost two years, freshly coming out of injury.  There was a lot of doubt, a lot of questions.  If your body will go, if everything, if you’re going to be good.  (I was in) very bad shape.  This one, we’ll be way far from all that stuff.”     

Fury is expected to fight Oleksandr Usyk in February, and Ngannou is willing to wait.  

Related: Tyson Fury believes ‘ring rust’ played a role in Francis Ngannou fight

“My best scenario in boxing is to wait for Fury,” said Ngannou.  “If Usyk could step out and let me fight Fury, then I fight Fury.  Then I let them do whatever they do.  I go back and maybe do some MMA fight and come back and get some people in boxing.  I’m planning to fight potentially like twice next year maybe February or March.  And again, if it doesn’t work I can still fight February or March in MMA then expecting by the end of the year, like this time, October, because it’s going to give me like 8 to 7 months to recover from my MMA fight in case something happens so I have a long schedule of time to get ready for the boxing match after MMA (the) match.  

“The result wasn’t there.  They robbed me from the result, but I still feel like, in some way, I have a victory, a victory of proving people wrong that I can do this.”    

After watching the fight, it strengthened Ngannou’s feeling that he defeated Fury.

“In the ring, I didn’t know what was happening in the fight.  It could have been either way.  My corner, my coaches, they were like, ‘Oh, yes you won,’ but I didn’t know in what sense they were saying because maybe I won because I fight good for them.  Fighting good was enough maybe for them.  Getting all the way there and not overwhelm myself was enough.  I thought I won but not sure.  I went back and watched the fight again and with everything I’m like, ‘Home come I lost this fight,'” Ngannou said.  

Ngannou felt like everything was against him in the fight.  He pointed out getting elbowed by Fury and the referee doing nothing about it.  He brought up. the 96-93 scorecard and the ‘politics’ that may have been at play.   

“I might just be collateral damage of a broken system,” he said.  “This is not right.”  

Ngannou said the loss might not affect him but there’s a lot of fighters out there being treated the same way.  He said ‘it’s sh*tty.  It’s corrupt,’ and a ‘disgrace for the sport.’