Eddie Hearn has mocked Francis Ngannou after the former UFC star offered a strange excuse for his knockout defeat to Anthony Joshua.
The former UFC heavyweight champion suffered a devastating second round knockout against Joshua in Saudi Arabia earlier this month.
After putting Ngannou down in the opening round, Joshua ended the fight after two more explosive shots shortly after.
Speaking on the MMA Hour, the Cameroonian suggested some bizarre timings in Riyadh that night had a negative impact on his final preparations for the fight.
The main event did not get underway until approximately 3am local time with Ngannou explaining he had been told to arrive at the Kingdom Arena at a certain time with Joshua arriving much later.
Such was the wait, the MMA star revealed he was ‘falling asleep’ back stage as he waited to make his ringwalk having been ‘tricked’ into getting tired.
‘Listen, I think we both fight at 3am,” Ngannou told The MMA Hour. ‘It’s not like I fought at 3am and he fought at like midnight or something. We both fought at 3am.
‘What I think, something that’s happened is that they get me to the arena very early. Like my pickup time was 10.30pm to go to the arena. And then when we get to the arena, they tell us that we are scheduled around 1.45am.
‘They come to the locker room around 1 and Joshua [was just arriving around 1]. I’m like, “OK, we are fighting at the same time, how come I have a pickup time?” We received a schedule, an email, and then for some reason I was there at least one hour before.
‘But for the fight, at least two hours beforehand. They do this kind of trick to get you tired.
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‘I was like cool. I didn’t know how it was, how important that was, until the fight day that I have to get there two hours before.’
Joshua’s promoter Hearn was having none of it, however. Replying to Ngannou’s comments which had been shared on Instagram, Hearn wrote: ‘I’m not sure he’s come round yet [from the knockout]’.
Ngannou’s next move could be a return to MMA having signed a deal with the Professional Fighters League [PFL] who have lined him up to fight Renan Ferreira next.
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