TYSON FURY claimed he did not start a brawl with Francis Ngannou as he feared KOing another Saudi Arabia super-fight.
Fury was forced to pull out of his February 17 undisputed title decider with Oleksandr Usyk after suffering a cut in sparring.
It was only in October that he was floored by Ngannou and deemed fortunate to walk away with a split-decision victory.
So there is no love lost between the rivals when they reunited ahead of Ngannou’s fight with Anthony Joshua.
The MMA superstar and Fury even got into a verbal altercation at Saudi boxing broker Turki Alalshikh’s house.
And the Gypsy King insisted only the threat of cancelling another blockbuster bout stopped him from throwing hands at Ngannou.
Fury told BoxNation: “Let me tell you something straight from the heart, if I never had as much respect as I do for Turki Alalshikh, I would have got up and punched his c*** right in for him.
“But I didn’t want to cancel another show for Turki. I’ve already cancelled one with a cut eye.
“If I had got up and set about him at the press conference, there would have been another show cancelled.”
Fury, 35, escaped Riyadh last year with his reputation and unbeaten record just about intact after Ngannou, 37, took him the distance.
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And he offered a bizarre analogy when explaining why he cannot truly rate Ngannou’s boxing skills.
Fury said: “I can’t tell you how good or bad Ngannou is because he never fought Tyson Fury on the night and I can’t honestly tell you how good or bad he is.
“The one thing I can tell you is that he’s a tough old boy because he took some thunderous punches about the head.
“But apart from that, the one thing I can tell you though is that he doesn’t have much boxing ability because he can’t follow up on a punch.
“Hence when he hit me with a shot to the side of the head and dropped me he couldn’t land another worthwhile punch.”
