Oleksandr Usyk’s comic explanation for Francis Ngannou’s superior performance against Tyson Fury

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Oleksandr Usyk made a slight joke lately while saying why he thought Tyson Fury was outperformed by novice boxer Francis Ngannou.

WBC heavyweight champion Tyson Fury had to face former UFC heavyweight champion Francis Ngannou in a boxing match on October 28. Moreover, the match was Ngannou’s professional boxing debut. To the surprise of most boxing fans, Fury was knocked down in the third round of the bout and won by a controversial split decision.

Oleksandr Usyk, who is the WBA, WBO, and IBF heavyweight champion, had something funny to say about that while waiting to meet Tyson Fury in the ring likely in February.

‘It seems to me that it was Tyson’s plan to relax me,’ Usyk said about Fury’s awful performance that day. ‘But I understand that I’ll have to work very hard in the ring in order to get the victory.’

Tyson Fury said something like that too after seeing Ngannou’s pre-fight training videos, but was shocked later in the ring. Hopefully, Usyk will not do what Fury did.

Zheilei Zhang, a mainstream heavyweight boxer from China who might challenge either Fury or Usyk next year or in the next two years for the WBO heavyweight title, said the following about the Fury-Ngannou match:

‘To be honest with you, I had Francis Ngannou [winning the fight], if you count the knockdown as a 10-8 round.

‘Throughout the whole fight, he was landing more power shots and he was being more aggressive. Fury didn’t throw a lot of punches for some reason, he was holding himself back and controlling the distance with his jab, so I think that it is a night of shame for the sport of professional boxing.’

Zhang went further to say, ‘It might have been an underestimation of his opponent, maybe a lack of training, we don’t know. Tyson is the only guy who knows what happened.

‘People like me are training so hard for boxing every day and we want to deliver professional performances and what Fury did last night was bad for the sport.’

Boxing analyst Johnny Nelson also commented about the match.

‘I watched the fight initially and I said ‘Tyson you have not won that’,’ said Nelson. ‘I watched it again the next morning ‘nah, he has not won that’.

‘I’m sat down with pen and paper looking at who’s hit who the most, then you think Tyson has touched him [Ngannou] more than he has touched him but Tyson didn’t deserve the win. He got the win because he landed more shots, because of his pedigree and what he’s done, in that we know the fighter that he is, that is why he got the nod.

‘You look at Ngannou, that was his first professional fight, and the performance that he put on in comparison to Tyson, if he would have got the win you couldn’t have complained. With Tyson being the champion, he is not supposed to lose like that.

‘Ngannou was the more powerful one, he was the one that pushed back, he got the power shots in. Count them! Sit down and count them! Let’s not gas with it, it was a close fight, if it had have gone either way, there is an argument for it.’

Francis Ngannou hopes for a rematch but will wait until the undisputed world heavyweight title bout between Fury and Usyk happens. Moreover, either champion’s next contest will be against IBF mandatory challenger Filip Hrgovic.