Francis Ngannou insists Anthony Joshua will have to wait until he rematches Tyson Fury before they square off in the ring. The Cameroonian-French MMA star gave Fury one of the toughest tests of his professional career last month in a fight that many felt he had done enough to win.
However, two out of the three judges scored the bout in favour of the WBC champion – much to the dismay of Ngannou, who claims he was “robbed”. In the immediate aftermath of the money-spinning Saudi showdown, Joshua’s promoter Eddie Hearn floated around the idea of Ngannou sharing the ring with his client while Fury takes on Oleksandr Usyk for all four major sanctioning body belts early next year.
But Ngannou insists he is only focused on one man right now. When asked whether he would be open to the idea of facing AJ next, Ngannou told TMZ Sports: “First of all, it’s too soon. Secondly, my focus, as boxing is concerned, is a rematch with Tyson. That’s the most important thing for me right now, everything else for boxing comes after.”
He added: “I would be willing to wait, they are going to fight sometime in February instead of December 23, which is my fault, I shouldn’t have cut him, then they would fight in December and then maybe we would have run it back earlier next year.”
Ngannou signed a multi-fight contract with PFL MMA in May after leaving the UFC four months prior. He is expected to compete in the promotion’s ‘Super Fight’ division at some point next year while he in turn juggles his promising boxing career alongside it.
It is likely he will make his PFL debut while he waits for Fury’s fight schedule to free up – although he may be waiting a while. The Gypsy King is expected to box Usyk in February but there is also a rematch clause signed into their contracts which could rule out a potential Fury vs Ngannou rematch until 2025.
There are also concerns about the finances involved in a second fight given the poor pay-per-view numbers their inaugural encounter reportedly generated. Dave Meltzer, a wrestling writer known for his reliability on PPV numbers, anticipates that the event did no more than 11,500 television cable order purchases over the weekend in the United States.
He reported the figures via the Wrestling Observer newsletter, shared on X, formerly Twitter, adding that 52,000 additional ESPN streams were registered for the fight, which falls well below initial expectations.
