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Tyson Fury and Francis Ngannou faced off for the first time since their boxing match was made official.
Fury and Ngannou will collide in a 10-round professional boxing match Oct. 28 in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. It will notably be the boxing debut of Ngannou as the former UFC heavyweight champion will get no easy task for his first taste of the sweet science.
However, he won't be complaining too much as this will easily be Ngannou's biggest payday in combat sports.
The same seems to apply to Fury as the WBC heavyweight champion will be earning quite the figure — enough to steer him away from a historic title unification clash with Oleksandr Usyk.
“Obviously I’m getting paid a hell of a lot of money,” Fury said at a press conference on Thursday when asked why he took the Ngannou fight (via Michael Benson). “And I get millions of people from MMA and boxing who are gonna watch it.
“Whether they like that I’m doing it or not, guess what they’re gonna do? Still watch it.”
While Fury is more or less correct that combat sports fans may complain but will still end up watching, the hope is that he'll ideally still face Usyk in early 2024.
And despite Ngannou's previous claims that the fight had a rematch clause, that isn't the case according to the Briton.
“I don’t like rematches, I hate them, I’ve been in litigation over poxy rematch clauses,” Fury said. “When you beat a man once, that should be it, move on.”
Fury is notably referring to his rematches with Deontay Wilder as the latter was able to get a trilogy fight while the former was negotiating over a title unification clash with Anthony Joshua.
The good news, however, is that this fight won't have any rematch clause — and is unlikely to be even needed given the odds of an Ngannou win — so hopefully Fury and Usyk are able to clash early next year and finally unify the heavyweight division at long last.
Until then, Fury has business to take care of against the PFL star who he would eventually face off.
You can watch it below:
‼️ Tyson Fury vs Francis Ngannou first face-off ahead of Oct 28th as Fury goes shirtless…
[🎥 @Queensberry] pic.twitter.com/lPLx7e40aL
— Michael Benson (@MichaelBensonn) September 7, 2023
Fury is coming off a TKO win over Derek Chisora in December. Ngannou, meanwhile, hasn't competed since outpointing Ciryl Gane in their heavyweight title fight back in January 2022.
