Thousands of words will be used to describe Tyson Fury’s performance in Saudia Arabia on Saturday night. None of them will be complimentary.

Not a single one of them should deflect any attention or praise away from what Francis Ngannou achieved. Ngannou may have lost a split decision victory but with the attention of the sporting world focused on that one square of canvas in Riyadh, the 37 year old debutant held his nerve, held his shape and almost pulled off one the greatest shocks in sporting history. Fury (34-0-1, 24 KO’s) will fly home to England with his unbeaten record and WBC title belt but the MMA superstar will board his flight with something money can’t buy; Respect.

"I’ve gotta be honest, I said all along that this fella’s strong, he’s a competitor - because I’ve looked at a lot of his fights that he had in the UFC - and he can punch. I thought he could never outbox Tyson and I expected Tyson to beat him but I thought it would be a rough, tough fight for him and if he catches him, he’ll go,” Fury’s promoter, Frank Warren, told Steve Bunce on the 5Live Boxing podcast. 

“The fella shaped up much, much better than I thought he would. Normally, MMA guys are a bit more square on. He actually shaped up really well. He gave Tyson the toughest fight he’s had, certainly in his last two fights. I thought he made more of a fight of it that Dillian [Whyte] or Dereck Chisora. He’s just a real rough house fighter and as I was watching it I stated thinking about a couple of fighters and what kind of problems he’d give. 

“He’s come out of that with a lot of credibility, there’s no doubt about that. all these so called smart arses who were saying it was a gimmick or an exhibition, did that look like an exhibition?

“That was a tough fight. I thought he [Fury] won it, I thought he won by three rounds at least on punches landed and so forth. Especially the later rounds he was catching him a lot with his jab.”

The fight was supposed to be the perfect piece of promotion ahead of a December 23rd undisputed heavyweight title showdown between Fury and WBA, IBF, IBO and WBO champion, Oleksandr Usysk, but as the sense of disbelief about what Ngannou was doing grew, the chance of boxing crowning a true heavyweight king before the end of the year shrank.

Usyk and his team stated this week that they had offered up prayers that Fury would emerge from the fight without any injuries or cuts but never in their wildest nightmares would they have imagined Fury may actually lose. 

This was a ten round, non title fight and it didn’t matter whether Ngannou had miraculously stopped ‘The Gypsy King’ - which looked like a genuine possibility when he dropped Fury in the third and during a dominant end to round eight - or whether he had been awarded the decision many felt he deserved, Fury would still have woken up in Saudi Arabia in possession of his WBC belt but the unification fight between he and Usyk would have lost a lot of it’s gravitas, interest and, lets be frank, earning power had he been coming into in on the back of a loss to a debutant. 

Fury scraped through but the December date seems to be off the table. Warren insists that the undisputed fight will still take place next, we just may have to wait a little longer to see it.

“Usyk got in the ring afterwards. That fight was signed and we were gonna do it on 23rd December. I doubt that will happen now because Tyson can’t be going into a camp after a tough fight like that having a week off,” he said. “That’s eight weeks away. He needs a bit of time to get his body back into shape and let it heal before he gets back into camp. It’ll be on early next year. 

“Riyadh Season finishes in March. It could be up until then. I told him to [have a rest]. He wanted to fight. I said, ‘Just go and have a break. You don’t have to make no decisions tonight. You do it to your agenda, not to everybody else’s.’”