Francis Ngannou predicted it would be ‘suicidal’ for Tyson Fury to fight him in an MMA cage.
Fury and Ngannou will contest a boxing bout on October 28 and there is a rematch clause that can be activated if the former UFC heavyweight champion is victorious.
While the WBC heavyweight belt is not being risked by Fury, the fight will go down on the pair’s professional records.
There has been suggestions that after the first fight in the ring, the pair could run it back under MMA rules, given Ngannou’s talents.
However, speaking to the MMA Hour, Ngannou thinks Fury would be foolish to undertake such a challenge.
“I don’t think Tyson would do that, that would be suicidal,” Ngannou said.
Discussing the criticism from boxing purists of the fight, he added: “In this case I would not say these are haters, they are right.
“They have the guy on one side who is top of the sport and on the other side they have a guy who they have never seen in a boxing match, so there is a question.
“Some boxing fans may have never watched me fight, so for them they will be thinking, ‘What’s going on? Who is this guy?’, Which makes sense, I would be asking the same question.
“And of course some people in the boxing world will be upset, because it’s the position they wanted to get and they were expecting to be in line and now they have this other guy who was climbing on another tree, who jumped across and got on top of the tree that they want to be on top of and he didn’t even stand in line, so of course they would be frustrated.
“I understand them, but listen, you have to chill out because it’s happening, so deal with it.”