Tyson Fury will fight Francis Ngannou

On Saturday, Saudi Arabia will host what is likely the strangest professional boxing fight of the year. In it, the holder of the World Boxing Council (WBC) heavyweight belt, Tyson Fury, who is preparing for a fight for the status of absolute champion against Alexander Usik, will meet Cameroonian Francis Ngannou, a mixed martial arts (MMA) superstar who fled last year from their main UFC promotion. for the sake of new challenges and new earnings. The match is given some purely sporting intrigue by the fact that Ngannou became famous in MMA primarily for his incredible power punch.

The fight in Saudi Arabia, which loves to host major boxing shows, is branded by its organizers as the Battle of the Baddest, that is, “The Battle of the Baddest Guys.” This refers to the image of their rivals: they diligently maintain it throughout their careers, trying to appear as not very balanced, eccentric, rude, angry, sometimes simply cruel people. And such a mix, of course, would seem to attract additional attention to the match, which in fact is not unique, but is built into an already rather long series of fights, which in America are usually called “crossovers.” This is when a representative of one fighting genre tries himself in another, “adjacent” one. Most often we are talking about representatives of mixed martial arts who suddenly decide to test themselves in boxing.

In the case of Francis Ngannou, the decision was shockingly unexpected. The Cameroonian was a UFC champion and enjoyed enormous popularity among MMA fans, but at the beginning of the year, having quarreled with the UFC, he ran away from the promotion and very quickly agreed on a boxing fight with none other than WBC champion Briton Tyson Fury, who could be considered the king of the heavyweight category, if not for the owner of the other three championship belts – the International Boxing Federation (IBF), the World Boxing Association (WBA) and the World Boxing Organization (WBO) – Ukrainian Alexander Usik. Fury recently finally agreed with Usik on a fight for the status of absolute world champion in Saudi Arabia, and the clash with Ngannou for him turned out to be something like a tight warm-up without a formal prize: the WBC title will not be at stake in it.

However, even if it had stood, it would hardly have served as an incentive for bookmakers to raise the meager odds on Francis Ngannou’s success. But the fact is that they, of course, remember very well what happened in the notable battles according to the rules of boxing between those for whom it is a “native” form and those who came from mixed martial arts. Among them were victories for MMA masters. Let’s say, in 2017, Anderson Silva defeated former middleweight champion Julio Cesar Chavez Jr., and in 2021, Vitor Belfort defeated the real legend Evander Holyfield. But Silva fought with Chavez when he had long passed his career peak and was experiencing serious problems with the regime, and Holyfield was on the verge of his 60th birthday at the time of the fight with Belfort. So there is nothing revealing about them.

But the flogging that blogger-boxer Jake Paul has been giving for several years to those trying to put him in the place of great MMA fighters is extremely revealing. Ben Askren, Tyron Woodley, Anderson Silva, and Nate Diaz managed to become his victims. And Paul is almost an amateur.

And most importantly, there is a very clear precedent. In 2017, a fight took place between two superstars – the invulnerable American boxer Floyd Mayweather and the Irishman Conor McGregor, who happily reigned in the UFC, and who had not yet been brought down to earth by Khabib Nurmagomedov. Fans of McGregor, who always impressed in the octagon with his competent and prickly work in the stand, were full of optimism, thinking that “dancer” Mayweather would not have an easy time with him. But it disappeared very quickly. Throughout the entire fight, McGregor, compared to Mayweather, looked like a pathetic, incompetent newcomer who had come to the boxing gym for the first time and who could neither attack nor defend. The American did whatever he wanted with him, and as if on purpose, in order to demonstrate his advantage longer, he delayed the match. The referee stopped him in the tenth round, when it was no longer possible to stop him: McGregor was completely lost.

In the case of Tyson Fury and Francis Ngannou, however, there is a trick that adds a bit of intrigue to the event. And this is not so much the Cameroonian’s seemingly serious preparation for the fight, in which the great Mike Tyson himself, another “very bad guy,” took an active part, but rather his background. Ngannou has never competed in boxing before – neither amateur nor professional, but all the glory in MMA, and there is no getting around it, he actually earned one overly effective trump card – not just a powerful, but a terrible blow. He put the strongest opponents on the floor without a chance to rise – Andrei Orlovsky, Alistair Overeem, Curtis Blaydes, Cain Velasquez, Junior dos Santos, Jairzinho Rozenstruik.

Somehow his strength was measured using the PowerCube device. The indicator – 129161 – became a record in the history of measurements. True, they bypassed most of the outstanding heavyweight boxers, but the figure is still impressive. Yes, in general, everyone who happened to fall under Ngannou’s fist confirms that the feeling after a rendezvous with him really is as if a truck is crashing into you at speed.

Naturally, Mike Tyson, who temporarily became his mentor, spoke about Francis Ngannou’s blow. He is, in fact, the Cameroonian’s only hope of fighting Tyson Fury more worthy than Conor McGregor fought Floyd Mayweather. Although, one must assume, Ngannou, even without completing this kind of task, will be quite satisfied if, like McGregor, he succeeds in another aspect. Experts, not hiding sarcasm, called the 2017 fight a “circus.” But this circus, thanks to the promotion and charisma of the artists, brought in gigantic revenues, the lion’s share of which went to pay the fees of the American and Irishman. It is assumed that Floyd Mayweather earned $280 million at that time, Conor McGregor – more than two times less, $130 million, but still he was not given that kind of money in MMA.

Alexey Dospehov