Former WBO Cruiserweight Champion, Johnny Nelson, has given his thoughts on the controversies surrounding the scoring of Tyson Fury’s crossover clash against Francis Ngannou.
Although Fury was expected to defeat the Cameroonian at a canter, the former UFC superstar pushed Fury throughout the ten rounds and even scored a knockdown over ‘The Gypsy King’ in the third.
As a result, the split-decision defeat for Ngannou didn’t go down well with some fans, with plenty arguing that the debutant did enough to defeat the WBC champion.
In an interview with Seconds Out, Nelson said he had watched the fight back and still believes Ngannou should have got his hand raise.
“I watched the fight initially and I said ‘Tyson you have not won that’. I watched it again the next morning ‘nah, he has not won that’. I’m sat down with pen and paper looking at who’s hit who the most, then you think Tyson has touched him [Ngannou] more than he has touched him but Tyson didn’t deserve the win. He got the win because he landed more shots, because of his pedigree and what he’s done, in that we know the fighter that he is, that is why he got the nod.
You look at Ngannou, that was his first professional fight, and the performance that he put on in comparison to Tyson, if he would have got the win you couldn’t have complained. With Tyson being the champion, he is not supposed to lose like that.
Ngannou was the more powerful one, he was the one that pushed back, he got the power shots in. Count them! Sit down and count them! Let’s not gas with it, it was a close fight, if it had have gone either way, there is an argument for it.”
It seems that won’t be the last we see of Ngannou in a boxing ring, with lots of potential suitors now calling him out.