WBC heavyweight champion Tyson Fury announced on Tuesday that he will face Cameroonian MMA star Francis Ngannou in a boxing match in Saudi Arabia on October 28. The fight will not be an exhibition, Fury’s team said, and will be contested “under official professional boxing rules, with three judges using the ten-point system.” Britain’s Fury’s WBC title won’t be on the line, however.
The whimsical “Gipsy King”, aged 34 and undefeated in thirty-four fights, had conquered the WBO, WBA and IBF heavyweight belts by beating Ukrainian Wladimir Klitschko at the end of 2015. But problems with depression and drug consumption drugs as well as suspicions of doping kept him out of the rings until 2018.
After a controversial first draw, he won the WBC title in February 2020 at the expense of American Deontay Wilder, whom he again dominated in a rematch. Holder of the heavyweight belt in the UFC, the most prestigious MMA league, Ngannou, 36, left it with a bang last January to then join the rival organization of the PFL in May. But it was already planned that he would not play his first fight there until 2024, preferring to devote himself to his confrontation against Fury.
