Francis Ngannou revealed he doesn’t remember anything from his boxing match against Anthony Joshua after round one.
On March 8, Ngannou attempted to further create history by facing Joshua in a ten-round boxing match. Unfortunately for ‘The Predator,’ things didn’t go as planned for him, as ‘AJ’ dropped him three times to secure a violent second-round knockout win.
Ngannou was first knocked down in round one, with the following two happening in the second three-minute portion. Yet, the former UFC heavyweight champion recently admitted that he doesn’t remember much of the fight after getting dropped early.
The Cameroonian-born fighter had this to say during an interview earlier today with Ariel Helwani on The MMA Hour:
“When the fight started, I was never there. Even the first minute, I remember when I get hit, the first punch, I was more surprised about the fact that I’m falling down from that punch than the punch itself. You know, sometimes even in sparring, you take some punch and you’re like, ‘D*mn, this guy hit hard,’ but you’re all right. I take a punch, the first punch, I was awake, but I didn’t really feel it. I find myself down, I’m like, ‘Man, what’s going on?’ I’m being count [for getting knocked down], so, okay, let’s take your time to get back up.”
Ngannou continued:
“Take my time, get back up, and things were still a little blurry…I went to the corner, and we started to talk, and they were talking to me, I was listening. My memory and my vision and everything kept going. I never came back from the stool. I don’t remember from when I came back from the stool to go back to the second round…From there from the stool in between the round, I wasn’t there anymore.”
Watch the fight-ending sequence of Joshua vs. Ngannou below:
Ngannou gets knocked out by Joshua pic.twitter.com/nTqHYo9DD7
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Francis Ngannou believes ‘boxing now owes him something’ before potentially returning to MMA
Francis Ngannou silenced thousands of doubters by nearly defeating Tyson Fury in October 2023. With that said, those same critics have returned following Ngannou’s knockout loss against Anthony Joshua, making ‘The Predator’ feel like he needs to return to boxing before fighting in MMA again.
Ngannou had this to say during The MMA Hour when asked about whether he plans to fight in boxing or MMA next:
“Right now, I don’t know [what’s next]. I started to feel like boxing now owes me something that I have to claim. The way that this fight happened [against Anthony Joshua] is not the way it was supposed to or the way it should have. So, I think now I need to do boxing now to claim something, to claim my respect, to claim everything. MMA is there. I don’t really know. I think it depends on the timeframe of what’s happened and the timeframe also of what is it. Maybe it could be MMA first. I don’t really know.”
Before worrying about what’s next, Francis Ngannou is focused on taking time off to recover physically from his loss against Anthony Joshua. It’ll be intriguing to see where ‘The Predator’ fights next, as the Professional Fighters League (PFL) planned to match up Ngannou against Renan Ferreira for an MMA bout later this year.
Watch Ngannou’s latest interview on The MMA Hour below:
