Francis Ngannou alleges he was misled into arriving at the venue far earlier than Anthony Joshua for their heavyweight fight in Saudi Arabia this month. The former UFC champion says he arrived two hours before his opponent. He claims that it caused him to “fall asleep” in the changing rooms before losing in the second round by knockout.

Francis Ngannou proche du K.-O. face à Anthony Joshua à Riyad, le 8 mars 2024.

Francis Ngannou claims he was “falling asleep” before his fight against Anthony Joshua and was misled into arriving too early.

The former UFC heavyweight champion suffered a second-round knockout earlier this month.

It was only his second professional boxing match, having been narrowly defeated by Tyson Fury in 2023.

But he says he was put off by being made to get to the arena much earlier than his opponent.”I remember being in the locker [room] trying to warm up, and it wasn’t going well,”

. “I was falling asleep! I’m sweating, but I was falling asleep.

“But I’m sure that’s how some people that I have fought and have beaten have been before. No blame on anybody, the blame here is all on me.

Failure is not about how many times you fall. You only fail if you don’t try to come back ☝🏿

Final episode Knockout Chaos: Joshua vs Ngannou https://t.co/XTlEOholEG pic.twitter.com/0idm2X8IPb

— Francis Ngannou (@francis_ngannou) March 16, 2024

“It’s not like I fought at 3am and he fought at like midnight or something. We both fought at 3am.

“Something that’s happened is that they get me to the arena very early. 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]. 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.

“They do this kind of trick to get you tired. 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.”

Ngannou had already announced ahead of the contest that he now plans to return to MMA to fight Renan Ferreira.

As he prepares to return to the octagon though, Ngannou – who has stated he is not finished with boxing just yet – insists he has no regrets about how the fight with Joshua ended.

“It is the game unfortunately,” he added. “We all knew it [the knockout] could happen.

“I wasn’t seeing it happen like that, but I always knew it could happen. At least, I was always prepared for that.”