Bob Arum is still holding hope for a crossover fight between Tyson Fury and Francis Ngannou.
The head of Top Rank hasn’t lost any interest in the potential megafight pitting a recently retired Fury against the current UFC heavyweight champion in Ngannou. Speaking in a recent media scrum, Arum said he’d love to put on the fight – even if it meant working with the UFC.
“(Ngannou) is still recovering from an injury, but I would love to do that fight,” Arum told Fight Hub TV and other media. “Depending on Ngannou’s contract with the UFC, we need to do it with or without the UFC. But that would be a huge, huge event.
“I’m interested. Who wouldn’t be? Ngannou was (is) the heavyweight champion of the UFC and with Tyson Fury, I think it will be a huge, huge event.”
Ngannou, 35, is recovering from a knee injury he had surgery on earlier this year. He last fought at UFC 270 in January, where he defeated Ciryl Gane in a unanimous decision in the first title defense of his UFC heavyweight belt. The win over Gane was Ngannou’s last fight on his UFC contract, and he has not yet re-signed with the promotion.
Fury, on the other hand, retired from boxing in April after retaining his WBC and The Ring heavyweight titles in his knockout win over Dillian Whyte in London. Fury recently teased a potential comeback, but has always maintained that he’d fight again if a bout against Ngannou can come to fruition, as he did during his post-fight interview when the two hyped up the potential matchup standing side-by-side.
Arum hopes the fight can come together and would like to see Fury back in action and out of retirement.
“Tyson is a very intelligent guy,” Arum said. “He has a lot of opportunities outside of boxing, so you take it with a guy like Tyson one step at a time. So I’m optimistic, without discussing it with him, that sometime down the road he’ll fight the winner of Joshua-Usyk, which I hope is Usyk, and he’ll fight Ngannou and maybe call it a day. But I know he loves training, and he loves being in the ring, so that’s a plus.”