Francis Ngannou didn’t take his loss to Anthony Joshua too well and has now claimed that ‘they do this trick to get you tired.’

A couple of weeks have now passed since former UFC champion Ngannou stepped into the ring for the second professional boxing fight of his career.

Following his superb showing against Tyson Fury in October, he was brought back down to earth with a literal bang when Joshua knocked him down twice and then out completely with a third shot in the second round, with ‘AJ’ now looking ahead to bigger things.

Speaking to the MMA Hour, Ngannou has now offered an excuse for his performance.

“What I think, something that happened is that they got me to the arena very early, like 1030pm, and then when we get to the arena they tell me that I am scheduled to fight at about 145am and then around 1am they come to the locker and Joshua hasn’t arrived.

“And I’m like we’re fighting at the same time but for some reason I was there for the fight at least two hours before him. Even during the week we had to go places and wait. Dewey was like ‘they do this kind of trick to get you tired.’”

He was then asked if he felt more nervous that last time out against Fury given a title shot was on the line for the winner.

“No, I never looked for the title shot, it’s good that it was there but I wasn’t chasing this. I was more nervous for the Tyson fight, it was my first time to fight after two years. It was my first boxing match. This time round I got past this, I had a better training camp.”

Ngannou must now decide if he is to rebuild in the boxing ring or return to MMA for the rest of his career.