Tyson Fury doesn’t think there should be any question about his split-decision victory over Francis Ngannou.
The unbeaten WBC heavyweight champion gave Ngannou a lot of credit for giving him a tough fight. The 35-year-old Fury also admits that the inexperienced Ngannou was trickier to box than he expected.
Fury still can’t see how Ngannou won five rounds, the minimum number of rounds he would’ve needed to win based on his third-round knockdown of Fury, to edge Fury by one point through 10 rounds Saturday night at Kingdom Arena in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.
“Maybe he won the 10-8 round, and maybe he won one other round,” Fury stated during an interview Monday with IFL TV. “But other than that, I was just boxing him and he couldn’t really close the distance down on me. So, at points it was tough, but not so much the other way.”
Judge Ed Garner scored five rounds for Ngannou, who won 95-94 on his card. Judges Juan Carlos Pelayo (96-93) and Alan Krebs (95-94) scored seven and six rounds for Fury, respectively.
“I’m not a boxing judge, but I can clearly see he didn’t win the fight by the punch stats,” Fury said. “And if he would’ve won the fight, they would’ve given it to him, wouldn’t they? It wasn’t me own show, was it? We’re both away fighters, and whatever.”
CompuBox unofficially credited Fury for landing 12 more punches overall than Ngannou (71-of-223 to 59-of-231). According to CompuBox, Fury landed 17 more jabs (39-of-137 to 22-of-115), but Ngannou connected with five more power punches (37-of-116 to 32-of-86).
Though the 6-foot-9, 277¾-pound Fury doesn’t believe Ngannou did enough to upset him in their pay-per-view main event, he commended the former UFC heavyweight champion for performing much better than oddsmakers and much of the public expected.
Fury refuted the prevailing opinion that he underestimated Ngannou as well. He emphasized that his 6-foot-4, 272-pound opponent simply deserves credit for fighting competitively.
“There’s always gotta be an excuse on why, why, why,” said Fury, who was a 20-1 favorite. “There is no excuses. You’re in there on the night, I done the best I could. That’s it. There’s no excuses. ‘Oh, I didn’t perform well because I didn’t tie me shoelaces in a certain manner.’ Listen, it was what it was.
“It was a tough fight. He was a good, game man, and that was it. There’s nothing else I can say about it. He was a good fella and I done me best, and that was it. I won the fight and out we go, on to the next one. I been paid, been laid and we go home now. That’s it.”
Keith Idec is a senior writer/columnist for BoxingScene.com. He can be reached on Twitter @Idecboxing.
