Wilder Loss Resurrects Joshua-Ngannou Talk

After last October’s career performance against Tyson Fury in Riyadh, former UFC heavyweight champion Francis Ngannou has become one of the top names in boxing.

Heavyweight boxing rivals Anthony Joshua and Deontay Wilder were supposed to face off in 2024, reaching an agreement on a two-fight deal before their respective bouts last month at the “Day of Reckoning” year-end pay-per-view (PPV) spectacle in Riyadh.

Unfortunately, Wilder was unable to hold up his end of the bargain, losing an uninspired decision to veteran bruiser Joseph Parker. That left the 34 year-old Joshua — victorious over Swedish striker Otto Wallin — without an opponent for his “sweet science” return.

“The fight’s dead for right now,” promoter Eddie Hearn told iFL TV. “You never know what’s going to happen in the future, but we both signed contracts to announce the fight that night, obviously subject to everybody winning. So when Wilder lost, it was like, what the f***? We had to go into the change room with Josh and he was like, ‘He just lost?’ I’m like, ‘Yeah. Look, don’t worry about that, you do your thing’ and he did his thing outstandingly and the fight is dead for now.”

Francis Ngannou to the rescue?

“So right now we have three fights that we’re in discussions for,” Hearn continued. “They’re all big and that doesn’t involve Deontay Wilder for March. Our aim, and we’ve expressed this, is to fight the winner of [Tyson Fury vs. Oleksandr Usyk]. That’s all we want to do. Obviously, there’s the [Filip] Hrgovic fight out there for the world heavyweight title. There’s a Francis Ngannou fight out there, which would be absolutely colossal. There’s other heavyweights as well. The [Zhilei] Zhang fight possibly as well with Queensbury.”

Perhaps Ngannou is not such a “gimmick” fight after all.