Francis Ngannou’s manager claims fight with Tyson Fury blew UFC’s “biggest and best” shows out of the water “by a million times”
Francis Ngannou’s manager, Marquel Martin, claimed the Tyson Fury vs. Francis Ngannou was “bigger and better” than UFC events.
On Saturday, October 28, a historic boxing match was held inside the Boulevard Hall in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. Despite most people counting him out, Ngannou went toe-to-toe with the WBC heavyweight champion and knocked him down in the third round before barely losing a split decision.
Before fighting Fury, Ngannou was in the UFC between 2015 and 2022. The relationship between ‘The Predator’ and DanaWhite/UFC spiraled out of control once the former heavyweight world champion decided not to re-sign, leading to some hard feelings.
During a recent interview on The MMA Hour, Ngannou’s manager, Marquel Martin, compared the boxing event in Saudi Arabia to the UFC’s production. He said:
“We got a tour of where the main event fight was going to be and that’s where it really set in. I think it was like 19,000 seats or something like that. You saw the stage. They walked us through how the walkout was going to be because we had planned on all of that. That’s when it just kind of set in. We’re used to the UFC shows being the biggest and the best and this trumped it by a million times. I’m just so happy for our brother Francis because that’s what he deserved.”
Francis Ngannou’s manager on how the venue for Fury vs. Ngannou was built in three months
The venue for Tyson Fury vs. Francis Ngannou, Boulevard Hall, wasn’t created until mid-2023. In fact, the people of Saudi Arabia made the entire structure in about three months. During the previously mentioned interview on The MMA Hour, Ngannou’s manager, Marquel Martin, had this to say about Boulevard Hall:
“Being in the middle of it all, we were all kind of taking it back by the sheer magnitude. If you go around just the arena, we took a tour of the arena, and one of the gentlemen from the Saudi team was telling me that they built that arena in three months. People don’t understand the amount of work that went on, 24 hours a day construction going into the event.”
Francis Ngannou didn’t need the judges’ scorecards to emerge as a winner from his boxing match against Tyson Fury. Instead, Ngannou earned respect from hundreds of thousands of people worldwide, likely leading to several more massive paydays in MMA and boxing.