Top fights lined up for Ngannou as Tyson Fury blames himself for being greedy

Renowned promoter Frank Warren has said he would like to keep working with Francis Ngannou and will give him a ‘top-level fight’ for his next bout.

Ngannou stunned the boxing world with his superb performance against Tyson Fury in Saudi Arabia, with the WBC heavyweight champion edging a controversial split-decision victory despite being dropped in the third round by the former UFC heavyweight champion.

Many believed that the Cameroonian – making his professional boxing debut – had done enough to earn a victory over the consensus no.1 heavyweight in the world, with Ngannou himself calling for the judges who scored their fight to be ‘sanctioned.’

Fury will now proceed to fight Oleksandr Usyk in their scheduled heavyweight unification fight, but Ngannou will not find himself short of offers to step back into the ring after his impressive display.

Warren, who promotes Fury, is one of those who would like to work with the 37-year-old again and listed two possible future opponents that he could face.

‘He has come out of this a huge star, a hero,’ Warren said. ‘He is now in a position to be in massive fights and I will have a meeting with him and his people about working together. The rematch could end up being as big as the Usyk fight.

‘I will offer him a top-level fight, he is solid, an athlete. He’ll get into the top 10 after that and based on that performance, I would give him a shot against anyone in the top 10 and I think he’d beat at least five of them right now.

 ‘He’d beat Manuel Charr all day long; him and Joe Joyce would be a good fight.

‘The Tyson rematch, if it happens, would be massive. It’s all about Tyson wanting to do it. He might turn round and say he’s had enough.’

Meanwhile, Tyson Fury had previously predicted his fight with Ngannou would be like Novak Djokovic on the court against a table tennis player.

Speaking to IFL TV two days after the fight, Fury discussed the knockdown seen around the world.

“I just got a little bit greedy – hit him with a one-two down the pipe, clean, and I went to jump back in for another one-two and he got me on the way out.”

He went on to say that there was little dissecting to be done post-fight, refusing to give weight to theories that he hadn’t prepared or there were outside factors affecting his performance.

“There’s no who to blame. Blame me. There’s no blame the trainer, blame the manager, blame the cutman. Blame me if you’re gonna blame anybody. It was what it was. It’s the fight game, not tap dancing. You go in there and have a fight.”