Francis Ngannou believes he was set up by both Queenbury and Matchroom before his fight with Anthony Joshua.
Ngannou was making just his second professional boxing appearance against the British heavyweight having performed admirably against Tyson Fury only losing via a controversial split-decision verdict from the judges.
But, it was in stark contrast to his bout with Joshua where he was knocked out cold in just the second round of their huge showdown.
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Speaking recently to Joe Rogan he claimed the promoters of the event messed him around with the time of the fight to ‘tire him out.’
He said: “We get into fight week, and every time we’re going to do media, they’re going to pick me up and then I get there and have to wait an hour and a half before [media] arrives,” Ngannou told Rogan. “On the third day of fight week, [His striking coach] Dewey Cooper started to get very mad, ‘This is what they do to get fighters tired!’ But at the time I didn’t know what was going on. So I’m like ‘No, come on, relax. It’s okay. I didn’t know until we get to fight day.”
“Fight day, we receive an email. Pickup time: 10:30 from the hotel. And when they say 10:30, by 10:20 there’s a car at your door waiting. The supposed fight time is between midnight to 1. We get to the arena at 10:45. A producer comes into the locker room, says, ‘Oh, guy, we are running late on the broadcast. Now we’re gonna go around 1:45.’ I’m like okay, 1:45. It’s 10:45. 3 hours. Okay.
“It was around 1:30 that [Joshua] arrived. I’m like … so we supposed to fight at 1:45? He’s arriving at 1:30 … we leave the room at 3:30. I have been in Saudi Arabia almost two months training to fight between midnight and 1. But even at that time I didn’t know what was happening. It was only after everything. Because I got to the point that I was so tired, I was in the locker room hitting mitts, then sitting down, falling asleep. Then I tell [coach] Eric Nicksick there’s something wrong. I’m asleep. I feel like I wanna sleep. Like, I’m sweating. But we just keep going.”
But he didn’t lay any of the blame on Joshua and paid him credit for his win.
He continued: “Not to say Anthony Joshua couldn’t beat me.
“I think if there’s somebody that you can lose against, he’s the guy, he’s one of the best doing it. This is definitely not on him, because he wasn’t the guy that was sending all those emails, organizing. So I’m not blaming him for anything. But the organization, they did some stuff that wasn’t fair.”
“His team was part of the organization because it was Queensbury [Promotions] and Matchroom [Boxing], those emails were coming to me from them. Those were the people that were sending the schedule, and every day they send everything, the pickup time, the program, the schedule.”
