John Fury, the father of WBC heavyweight champion Tyson, has said that Francis Ngannou fought the worst version of his son that had ever stepped into a boxing ring in their bout last month in Saudi Arabia. 

Fury squeezed past the former UFC champion Ngannou via split decision in what was the Cameroonian’s professional boxing debut despite being knocked to the canvas in round three. Afterwards, several big names across both boxing and mixed martial arts suggested they believed that Ngannou had done just about enough to have been given the decision win that was ultimately awarded to Fury.

And speaking to GiveMeSport as part of an arrangement with FreeBetsUK, the elder Fury said that he knew something was not quite right in the camp.

“Ngannou probably fought the worst version of Tyson I have ever seen, physically and mentally,” John Fury said. “Even in the dressing room, his face was a funny colour. I was watching him spar the week before, and I wasn’t impressed. His lungs were all over the place during the week, I was taking notes of how hard he was breathing after rounds.

“It could be where we were at, but things weren’t improving. He had a terrible week, one of his worst ever, but he still did enough to win.”

Fury added that his son was forced to dig deep to secure a win in the later rounds, and abandon his initial strategy of wanting to trade power-for-power with the notoriously hard-hitting Ngannou.

“If Tyson wasn’t able to go back to the old version of him in the later rounds he was f*cked,” Fury said. “But he hadn’t been training to do that, and he was instead trying to throw bombs. I saw it coming, and I knew this would happen. What was he doing trying to blow him away? He wasn’t giving it his full wit, his full concentration, and he thought it was going to be easy because people were telling him that.”