2024-08-30 10:26:59

Francis Ngannou is open to a return to boxing.

The heavyweight competes in his first MMA bout since 2022 when he takes on Renan Ferreira on October 19 after switching to boxing for fights against Tyson Fury and Anthony Joshua but is not describing his return fight as a “comeback”.

Ngannou told BBC Sport: “I never left MMA. Also, I haven’t left boxing.

“I’m not returning to MMA, I never left MMA. That’s the confusion.”

The former UFC star lost narrowly to Fury in his boxing debut before suffering a brutal knockout loss at the hands of Joshua but does consider his switch of sport to have been a “negative” experience.

Ngannou said: “The fact that those fights even happened, it was something exceptional.

“I had that dream for over 20 years and I finally put it into fruition. That was dream chasing, a life-long dream I completed.”

The Cameroonian fighter claimed last month that he wasn’t feeling right going into the Joshua bout and thinks that an underlying illness contributed to his comprehensive defeat in March.

Ngannou told The Joe Rogan Experience podcast: “I got into the ring and I wasn’t feeling myself.

“The first round when he knocked me down and I fell and I was like, ‘Did I slip?’ What exactly knocked me down? I felt the punch but it wasn’t the punch that knocked me down.

“I really got confused at that time. I was like ‘Damn, what?’

“But from that moment I got knocked down with a punch that wasn’t that hard.

“He hit my hand before he hit my face and I felt it, I felt the punch but it wasn’t [enough to put me] on the floor.

“I get a count, I stood up we finished the round and I went to my corner.

“But by the time I went to my corner, I never came back from that, from there I don’t remember when I left the stool to get into the second round.

“I remember exactly what happened until I got to the stool. I remember sitting there and I started to have blurry vision.

“The guy in front of me was speaking to me and then the voice was getting distant.

“I don’t know if it was the fatigue, but something wasn’t right.”

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