There was more than a little taunting going on between Ngannou and Fury inside the cage during their Riyadh Season clash. Here’s what was said.
Francis Ngannou shocked the world in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia on Saturday night, taking Tyson Fury to the brink of defeat in a stunning ten round performance. While the judges handed the fight to “The Gypsy King” via split-decision, Ngannou walks away having proved he can hang with the best in boxing (watch the highlights here).
Few believed he’d be able to stand against Fury. Even Tyson himself tried to punk Francis as the two touched gloves to open the fight. That just lit a fire under Ngannou. In a new video on his YouTube channel, “The Predator” relayed some of the trash talk that went on between the two in their fight.
“When we got closer and touched gloves, he said ‘Let me take you to school,’” Ngannou recounted. “I’m like ‘You motherf—er, you are not taking me to school.’ That’s why when I knocked him down, I was dancing in front of him, like ‘You a bad professor, motherf—er. You a bad professor. How is that school going? Who is taking who to school? Because to me, it looks like I’m the one taking you to school.’”
“That was the language that I was expressing at that time. Who was taking who to school?”
As for how he rated his performance in the Battle of the Baddest?
“I feel pretty good,” he said. “I wasn’t so busted up in the fight. I got hit a couple times but not too bad so I was able to manage not to get damage. So I feel pretty good. And regardless of the decision, personally I am satisfied with my performance. I know that I could have done better and I will go back and get better. But I really believe I didn’t come up short in this fight. I believe that I stood toe to toe with the number one boxer in the world for my first match, and I basically won the fight.”
Now that the bout is over, Ngannou is willing to admit he was a bit nervous walking into such a high profile match for his boxing debut.
“If I was doing MMA I would say it’s just another fight,” he said. “But the fight was so big and it was a different sport. So it was even harder, the magnitude of this fight promotion and everything, then it’s a different sport where I don’t have that feeling, I don’t know the temperature of this water, I have to test it. And I’m like ‘Ah man, I hope I will not be surprised. I hope I won’t embarrass myself here after all this promotion.’”
“But again, you are a competitor,” he added. “You have to go out there and perform, you know that if you let it go, it won’t be so bad. You try to convince yourself by your training, if you’ve done everything right, then you should be okay.”
Ngannou did more than okay, even winning the fight on the scorecards of many watching. Unfortunately, the only scorecards that really count are the ones handed in by the judges ringside (see those here). They saw it as a narrow victory for Fury, which just sets up a potential rematch down the road. This time, everyone will have to give Francis Ngannou the respect he deserves.