This article has been updated after originally being published in April 2022, following an appearance together in the ring by Tyson Fury and Francis Ngannou after a Fury victory over Dillian Whyte. A boxing match between Fury and Ngannou was announced on July 11.
Tyson Fury is the greatest heavyweight in the world. Francis Ngannou is the greatest heavyweight in the world. Those two superlatives can both be true at the same time. And there’s little chance that a boxing match between the two big men will settle anything.
So why did Fury, moments after his knockout of Dillian Whyte in April 2022 in London, invite Ngannou into the ring to talk up the then-UFC champ as his next challenger? If you need a hint, consider that there were 94,000 well-targeted potential customers right there at Wembley Stadium and a massive pay-per-view audience at home listening to Fury’s sales pitch.
Why Ngannou, though? It’s indisputable that in a boxing ring Fury, the undefeated WBC and lineal world champion, would be levels above an MMA fighter who has never competed professionally as a boxer. But by eyeing each other as partners in a crossover endeavor, the two heavyweight champions were simply following a trend. Combat sports, especially boxing, are deeply entrenched in an era of gaudy spectacles.
Within the past few years, we’ve seen:
• A former NBA point guard, Deron Williams, box an ex-NFL running back, Frank Gore
• A different former NBA point guard, Nate Robinson, lace up the gloves against a YouTube influencer, Jake Paul
• And that same YouTuber, Paul, take on Ben Askren, a retired MMA fighter (and Olympic wrestler) with practically no stand-up combat skills
• Paul then twice face another faded former MMA star, Tyron Woodley … then fight retired former UFC champion Anderson Silva … then book a fight with ex-UFC star Nate Diaz
• Paul’s brother, Logan, fight retired Hall of Fame boxer Floyd Mayweather
The fad was sparked in 2017 when MMA’s biggest star, Conor McGregor, drew the undefeated Mayweather out of retirement. After a fiery promotional tour through four cities in three countries, the extravaganza attracted a reported 4.3 million PPV buys, making it the second-biggest-selling fight ever.
And with that a lot of eyes grew wide, inside and outside the sports world, with starstruck visions of easy-money opportunities.
The common ground linking all of these spectacle fights — aside from being lucrative — is that they have featured at least one non-boxer and at least one athlete who retired from professional sports. Technically, Fury vs. Ngannou will fit right in. Ngannou has never before fulfilled his childhood dream of becoming a pro boxer. And Fury indicated before the 2022 fight with Whyte that it would be his boxing swan song, and he echoed his retirement announcement in his postfight interview.
But in reality, the scenario this time is different. Fury, who ended his retirement with a TKO win over Derek Chisora in December, is in his prime. So is Ngannou, who fought out his UFC contract last year and signed a contract with the PFL that, unlike his UFC deal, allows him to take boxing matches. The skill sets both men will bring to the ring will be sharp. Unlike boxing vs. MMA ventures of the past, from Mayweather-McGregor in the ring to Randy Couture vs. James Toney in the Octagon way back in 2010, the pairing of Fury and Ngannou will clearly define the difference between world championship boxing and the fisticuffs of the most fearsome mixed martial artist.
And yet to analyze this matchup as competition is to miss the point. Ngannou has shown himself to be the scariest dude on the planet, with knockouts in five of his final six UFC bouts. If he touches Fury flush, he will hurt him. But why would anyone believe a boxing beginner can do what experienced practitioners of the sweet science could not? It’s about as plausible as Fury choking out Ngannou inside the PFL cage.
I used to forcefully resist these spectacles. Give me a champion against a No. 1 contender all day. And in a way, the Fury-Ngannou matchup could be viewed as even more troubling than the extravaganzas that came before, because this one will involve not over-the-hill names but the current best fighters in the glamour divisions of their respective sports. Wouldn’t it be better — for boxing and MMA — if these men continued to compete against the top challengers in their domains?
Yes, it would, at least for those fans drawn to sports by the promise of competition at the highest level. But what Fury and Ngannou do isn’t simply a sport known as fighting. It’s prizefighting. And Ngannou, for one, will likely earn a bigger prize for his fight against Fury than any other fight he could take. He fought out his UFC contract to have the independence to do this. Why deny him if there are paying customers interested in watching?
Don’t expect a windfall anywhere near the size of the Mayweather-McGregor earnings, though. McGregor possesses an essential fight game skill that Ngannou does not: He talks the talk with such authority that he instills a belief among potential customers that he’s actually capable of walking the walk. That is intoxicating to watch, whatever the price.
Just like in his MMA career, McGregor’s brashness and belief were influential during the Mayweather buildup. While the most sensible among the combat sports public recognized the match as nothing more than the money grab it was, many got caught up in the bluster. McGregor’s self-possession hypnotized even some respected fight analysts into believing that a 0-0 neophyte would defeat a 49-0 boxer who had beaten Manny Pacquiao, Oscar De La Hoya and Canelo Alvarez, among many others, on his way to becoming the best of his generation. Silly them.
Ngannou is not the used car salesman that McGregor is. The big guy makes a resounding statement with his ham-hock fists every time he steps inside a cage, but his soft-spoken words hit with a pitter-patter. When Fury called him over during his postfight ESPN interview in the ring following the Whyte fight last year, Ngannou didn’t exactly seize the opening. He looked a bit awed by the moment when the microphone was put in front of him.
“We’re gonna find out who is the baddest motherf—er on the planet,” was about all Ngannou could offer. Meanwhile, Fury, still sweaty and fueled by adrenaline from the fight that had just ended, brought all of the energy needed to pump up the fight he wanted to sell — and his sculpted-from-granite potential opponent. “Look at the muscles on him!” Fury said at one point, giving an admiring glance at Ngannou, who just smiled, saying nothing.
Perhaps that’s why, when Ngannou appeared on “The MMA Hour” a few days later, he stressed that he wanted the UFC to be involved in promoting a Fury fight. Ngannou knows himself and his limitations as a huckster, and he recognizes the promotional, um, muscle of the fight company with which he was hoping to re-sign. “It doesn’t matter how big it can be,” he said of a Fury fight, “the UFC can make it bigger.”
By the end of the year, however, Ngannou had moved on from the UFC.
And Ngannou, true to form (and refreshingly, I must say), had no interest in making a hard-sell on what he and Fury were trying to create. “If you don’t want it, step away, brother. Nobody invited you here,” he said during his appearance on “The MMA Hour.”
“If you like it, you’re welcome.”