Francis Ngannou remains haunted by the memory of his bout with Anthony Joshua, not because of the knockout itself, but because he believes the outcome was decided before the bell rang. In a sit-down with Clubhouse Boxing ahead of Joshua’s upcoming clash with Jake Paul, Ngannou reflects on a night he says felt sabotaged, leaving him with a sense that he never truly got to compete.
“I can honestly say I was done in the locker room,” he recalls. “Before I even stepped into the ring, I was already spent. I warmed up, then had to stay warm for hours. I felt drowsy while waiting, and when I finally entered the ring, it wasn’t the fight I was prepared for.” He adds that the delay and the atmosphere gave the impression that Joshua was orchestrating the moment, which tainted the experience for him.
Ngannou says the sequence of delays did not feel like random hiccups but a pattern that matched what his longtime coach, Dewey Cooper, had warned could fatigue a boxer. Cooper grew frustrated as the team repeatedly found themselves waiting two hours whenever they were told to relocate for the next activity, a pattern Ngannou initially dismissed as mere delays but which Cooper perceived as a deliberate strategy to wear them down. By the end of the week, Ngannou began to see the signs more clearly, even if he hadn’t fully acknowledged them at the time.
When asked if he believes Joshua and Matchroom were behind it, Ngannou does not hesitate. “It was done on purpose. 100 percent it was done on purpose. Looking back, that’s bad. I was cooked long before I stepped into the ring, and that might be my fault for not recognizing the pattern sooner.” He concedes that, had he anticipated the tactics, he might have handled the situation differently, echoing that his expectations for a Fury-style buildup did not play out as he anticipated with Joshua.
For Ngannou, who bridged from MMA to boxing in search of fair opportunities, the experience revealed the political undercurrents of the boxing world. He describes the sport’s internal politics as “crazy,” even more daunting than what he experienced in MMA, likening it to running a country in its complexity.
Ngannou doesn’t claim to know exactly how a rematch would unfold, but he believes it would be a very different fight if the surrounding conditions were altered. He worries, though, that his ostracized status as an outsider could drive opponents to recreate the same environment. “The fight could go either way, but it would be very different under different circumstances,” he explains. He even senses a potential attempt to replicate the previous setup, though he’s not certain it would happen again.
Despite the brutal KO, Ngannou insists his body wasn’t as damaged as some observers assume. He says he didn’t suffer a concussion and believes he was exhausted rather than concussed after the second-round stoppage. After the fight, he sought medical checks in Paris to rule out concussion, and those tests came back clear.
As Joshua prepares for what many consider the most polarizing match of his career against Jake Paul, Ngannou reflects on a moment when he might have been in the running for that fight himself. He reveals that he was briefly approached about stepping in for Jake Paul after Tank Davis was ruled unavailable, but he dismissed the offer as unbelievable before hearing Joshua’s name attached to the bout. He recalls that negotiations involved substantial money, but he wasn’t seriously considering the switch at the time.
Ngannou also shares a personal perspective on why a fighter might chase a high-profile bout like Joshua vs. Jake Paul: sometimes the motivation isn’t just spectacle but a chance to heal from past defeats. He revisits his own lows after losses to Stipe Miocic and Derrick Lewis, detailing how those defeats nearly eroded his confidence and love for the sport. The Stipe loss in 2018 forced him to rethink his identity and purpose as an athlete, sparking a crucial realization: losing is part of the learning process, but the joy of competing must come first. He emphasizes that rediscovering that joy helped him regain his form and confidence, suggesting that Joshua’s decision to take on the Jake Paul fight might also be, in part, a bid to fall back in love with the sport.
Whether Joshua can recapture that spark remains to be seen, but Ngannou’s critique of boxing’s inner workings endures. The bitterness from that night stays with him as a warning: the sport’s politics can shape outcomes in ways that go beyond the ring, and the debate about truth and fairness in boxing continues to spark strong opinions.
