UFC heavyweight champion Ngannou has been pushing for a crossover fight against Fury over the past few years, and finally gets his wish on Saturday night in Saudi Arabia
Francis Ngannou and his team laid out a plan to win UFC gold before fighting Tyson Fury as long ago as 2019, four years before Saturday night's super-fight was made. In March of 2021, the first part of that dream was realised when Ngannou returned to the summit of his main sport and this time stopped Stipe Miocic, who had handed him his first UFC loss three years prior.
And now after defending his belt and getting out of his contract, the Cameroonian is ready to make the second part of his dream a reality. Ngannou isn't being given much of a chance against Fury in the big-money Saudi Arabian fight, although he will earn an eye-watering eight-figure sum for the bout. But his team are confident that he will win, and can be seen in a pre-show documentary willing the result into existence. "Francis and I actually started talking about Tyson Fury in I'd say 2019," manager Marquel Martin told Top Rank Boxing's YouTube channel. "I'd actually wrote out on a big post-it note that the plan was Francis becoming UFC heavyweight champ and then going into boxing and fighting one of the three big heavyweights. That was Deontay Wilder, Tyson Fury and Anthony Joshua. "So to see that it wasn't exactly that but pretty much in terms of just having a fight of this magnitude come to fruition, it's just incredible. What's that, almost four years now? I was never like 'oh yeah this isn't possible.' I was always like 'dude, when he becomes UFC heavyweight champion he is undeniable, his story is so incredible, regardless of your beliefs it's destined to be." That is in line with what Ngannou has previously said about his coach Mike Tyson, whom he asked to corner him in the fight around the same time. He was appearing on a podcast episode with Tyson in 2019, at the time just two fights into his return to winning ways after two lack-lustre showings in back-to-back losses against Miocic and Derrick Lewis, but was confident in his boxing. Do you believe that Francis Ngannou can knock out Tyson Fury? Let us know your thoughts in the comments section below! “Four years ago I met Mike Tyson for the very first time and for many of you that know me, know that for me Mike Tyson is the best to have ever done this," Ngannou told the media during the fight build-up. “In our conversation, one thing I precisely requested from Mike Tyson, was that whenever I fight Tyson Fury, would he be in my corner? "Everyone looked at me as a fool to even think of fighting Tyson Fury but today it is happening. From the moment it was announced officially that Im fighting Tyson Fury, I hit up Mike Tyson. I'm like, ‘Bro, that thing became true, this is it.’ It's something magical, I grew up with Mike Tyson as the face of boxing and I get to the point where for my first boxing match... I was in the gym training, thinking, 'Is this real?' "Mike Tyson is in my corner for my first boxing match, this is real, I'm living the dream. The motivation, the wisdom, the knowledge he brings is unique. He has been there tens of times, hundreds of times, so he knows a lot about the game and if theres one person I can trust as far as boxing is concerned, it’s Mike Tyson.”
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