Matt Brown wasn’t alone in picking Tyson Fury to dominate Francis Ngannou in their fight this past Saturday night, but the veteran UFC welterweight was definitely shocked at the result.
Despite competing in his first professional boxing match, Ngannou put on a brilliant performance while scoring the only knockdown in the fight before ultimately losing a controversial split decision. Meanwhile, Fury was effectively embarrassed after he entered the fight as a 14-to-1 favorite with most boxing pundits predicting that he would toy with the less experienced Ngannou and eventually put him away inside 10 rounds.
Instead, Fury looked timid and confused dealing with Ngannou, especially when faced with the kind of power the former UFC heavyweight generates in his punches.
“I was pumping up Tyson Fury,” Brown said on the latest episode of The Fighter vs. The Writer. “I thought he was this and that. I’ll tell you what, this reminded me of Buster Douglas-Mike Tyson. A huge upset. Whether Francis won or not, you can talk about that, but the fact that he went to a split decision and arguably won, that’s a win. That’s an upset to the f****** max.
“What we found when Mike Tyson fought Buster Douglas, we found out who Mike Tyson was. We realized he was not the stone cold murderer that was going to walk through everybody that he came across. Buster Douglas stood up to him and fought him like a man and that was all it took. I see that the same here. We found out who Tyson Fury is. He was not the boxer that we thought that he was. I think he took this fight serious. I think he went for it. I think he trained for it, and I think he’s been overrated this whole time. I think I overrated him. I underrated Ngannou and overrated Tyson Fury.”
For all the ways Ngannou shocked the world with his performance, Brown couldn’t help but unleash on Fury when addressing his abysmal showing while facing a newcomer to the sport of boxing.
By all accounts, Fury should have beaten Ngannou in a landslide just based on experience alone but instead he barely survived. Brown believes that says a lot about Fury and the entire heavyweight division in boxing.
“Tyson should have walked through him,” Brown said. “He’s 33-0, undefeated champion. He should have walked through him. This tells me that the level of heavyweight boxing is very low. I don’t care if you’re the greatest athlete in the history of mankind, you should not come in and go to a split decision with the champion.
“That tells me that the whole division and I’m not hating on Tyson — I love the guy, I love his personality, I love everything about him, I’ve always been huge on him — but I think [he’s] just overrated. Nobody should come in their first match and be able to do that. Tyson Fury should have put him away. This absolutely drives me nuts. He fumbled the bag on Saturday night. This should not have been a competitive match and again, I think Tyson took it serious. I think he really trained for it but when he felt Ngannou hit him, we all seen the look in his eyes. He did not want to be in there at that point. He was shocked.”
Considering how close he came to beating the heavyweight champion in his boxing debut, Ngannou will likely be fielding a lot of offers to stick around to compete again — potentially against another top contender like Anthony Joshua or Deontay Wilder.
In a perfect world, Ngannou would lure Fury into a rematch but “The Gypsy King” was already contracted to clash with Oleksandr Usyk before he ever set foot in the ring this past Saturday night.
No matter the opponent, Brown expects Ngannou to demolish whoever gets thrown at him next because he now considers the entire heavyweight division in boxing an embarrassment to the sport.
“I’m a broken record, the heavyweight division in boxing right now just sucks,” Brown said. “These guys are not what we thought they were and Francis Ngannou just exposed them. If he fights [Anthony Joshua], he’s going to beat AJ’s ass. If he fights [Deontay] Wilder, he’s going to beat Wilder’s ass.
“He’s going to go in and wreck the heavyweight division. He’s going to go fight Fury and he’s going to probably win. I think he’s going to wreck them all. I’m calling it now. Francis Ngannou is going to dominate the heavyweight boxing division because they suck.”
Francis Ngannou stood his ground when it came time to renegotiate with the UFC on a new contract, which eventually led to his exit from the promotion while still reigning as heavyweight champion.
The gamble paid off when Ngannou not only inked a lucrative multi-fight deal to continue his MMA career in the PFL but he also booked his dream match for his professional boxing debut against Tyson Fury this past weekend. Not only did Ngannou land the fight he wanted but he nearly beat Fury after scoring a knockdown in the third round before ultimately losing a razor-close split decision.
Other prominent champions like Sean O’Malley have already been calling for boxing matches of their own but former UFC commentator Dan Hardy doesn’t expect UFC CEO Dana White to make it easy for anybody to follow in Ngannou’s footsteps.
“We got the [Floyd Mayweather-Conor McGregor] thing and that was a one-off,” Hardy explained on The MMA Hour. “I do feel like the UFC in particular like Dana’s a boxing fan. I think he was intrigued by that because he felt Conor was something quite special and he might be able to just do something as well as obviously they made a bunch of cash out of it.
“If you look at somebody like a Sean O’Malley or a Jon Jones, he doesn’t want to take that risk. You remember when he took Chuck Liddell over to PRIDE and ‘Rampage’ [Quinton Jackson] beat him up, that kind of burned him, I feel. He’s been very, very reluctant to risk breaking his toys in other people’s promotions. I think he’s going to do everything he can to stop people from doing it.”
Fighters under contract with the UFC need to get permission to compete in any other combat sport including boxing or even grappling, which effectively ends any potential conversation before it begins if the promotion doesn’t sign off.
That said, Ngannou proved that waiting out his contract and then testing free agency can definitely pay off. It could even inspire more fighters to do the same.
“I think now people are going to have the courage and confidence to see Ngannou go into free agency, recognize that maybe the grass is potentially greener elsewhere,” Hardy said. “The money is certainly greener elsewhere, I can tell you that. We’ll see a few more people working their way out of their contracts.”
Hardy knows there will be opportunities available to some of the UFC’s biggest and brightest stars, especially after what Ngannou did in his debut against Fury.
“Sean O’Malley wants to step into boxing,” Hardy said. “There are other fighters like Sean Strickland, he’s made a fan out of me in his performance against Israel Adesanya and I know in the boxing world he’s very unorthodox and very difficult to deal with. I would absolutely put him in there against some of those guys and watch him mix it up. There’s definitely scope for other fighters to cross over.”
Beyond boxing, Hardy also knows that money talks loudest and Ngannou negotiated a hefty purse for anybody he ends up fighting in the PFL as well.
The potential to score a lucrative payday to take on arguably the best heavyweight in the world could also serve the perfect temptation to lure some UFC fighters to test free agency in the near future.
“$2 million on the table for Francis Ngannou’s first opponent in the PFL,” Hardy said. “There are enough heavyweight fighters that are prize fighters, because they’re big guys that punch hard that will go where the money is.
“I think we’re going to see a couple of people come out of their contracts soon and crossover ready for that big payday.”
No Doubt
Matt Brown is the epitome of the MMA fan.
One less than stellar performance and a guy is and always was shit and garbage.
What have you don’t for me lately eh Matt?
Nothing like pumping up what Francis was able to accomplish by attributing it all to Fury and boxing being complete shit.
Brock Lesnar was only a 2-1 pro fighter when he beat the UFC HW champ, supposedly the baddest man on the planet. Brock had been fighting for less than two years.
Freaks of nature like Brock and Ngannou can do crazy stuff, especially at HW.
Down at LHW, Jones won the title three years after turning pro and going 13-0.
This. HW, due to sheer size of the human bodies involved, is the biggest crapshoot.
Yep
Very few HWs string together long win streaks for this reason
I disagree.
Francis has been sparring and punching for a living for how many years now? Is that not experience?
He also has tremendous strength and tenacity. Physical traits alone he is Tyson’s toughest ever opponent. Wilder had the crazy power but Tyson could bully him with his weight. Francis is too strong for that.
Tyson said he learned in the Wilder 1 fight after getting knocked down, he could take it to Wilder and bully him. His style changed after that, and focused less on being a pure boxer and focused more on using his size/strength/power.
Francis looked super sloppy in his UFC reels. He went for the kill with shit technique because it works when you have crazy power and are a heavyweight. Just watch the beatdown on Rozentruik for example. So sloppy, yet so dominant.
There was 0 boxing film on Francis. The days leading up to the match there was film of Francis hitting the pads. the comments all said “hahahahhhahaa” and “Fury is going to destroy him”.
Fury went into the fight against the strongest, most powerful (arguably vs Wilder) and tenacious fighter he’d ever faced. His toughest opponent, physically – believing he was going to easily demolish him.
He found the hard way, by getting dropped with a well timed counter hook, that he wasn’t going to bully Francis or outclass Francis.
He was ill prepared for this assignment.
It’s entirely possible, if the Usyk fight wasn’t lined up already, that Fury watches the fight again, obsesses over it, trains his ass off, comes in with the right strategy and dominates Ngannou in a rematch.
This fight said nothing about boxing. Stop taking credit away from Francis with that bullshit.
I know he outwrestled Chael and DC, but Jones used a fuck ton of eypokes to win many of his fights even early on, Id take him out of the post and then its perfect (parallels of Brock and Ngannou).
3 years is more than enough time. You don’t get better with age in MMA, and it’s a sport where you can gain experience at a high level very fast. 3 years after turning pro, so he had basically already been at it 4+ years. That’s more than enough.
Timing is everything. If Cole Conrad had come over to the UFC early, he would have beat down a washed completely shot one foot out the door Herring and old ass Couture too, but he retired.
So could Cain, JDS, Carwin, lots of dudes. Hell there are a SLEW of 185ers who could have done the same thing.
Brock Lesnar could have easily won the UFC belt in his first try against randy couture.
What does that say about MMA?
He won the belt with a 2-1 record…
Francis has been sparring with top boxers for years. These guys all spar together. GSP used to train with Olympic wrestlers.
The idea Francis was just some Rocky Balboa type coming in was a lie. I disagree about Fury taking it serious though, I think he expected a walk in the park
Then again he was a freak athlete and had years of experience in wrestling, arguably the best base for MMA and the cornerstone of his fighting style. As opposed to just a big dude deciding to be a fighter with no applicable background and training for two years.
HW boxing is for sure pretty poor these days. And Fury, although very good for such a big guy (when hes on form), had definitely become massively overrated in recent years. His resume is thin, he is very unfocused and undisciplined and hes quite pillow fisted for his size.
this
I think part of that is HW boxing isn’t heavyweight anymore, its really superheavyweight boxing being called Heavyweight.
Ali fought between 215-225. Tyson shot for 222. “Big George Foreman” weighed in at 220 vs Ali.
Fury and Ngannou both weighed in at over 270 pounds! As crazy as it is that Ngannou is 270 and shredded year round.
AJ fights between 240 and 255.
Jared Anderson is 240+
Fat guys like Chisora and Whyte at around 260
Usyk and Wilder are the only real heavyweights at around 210-222 ish.
I think boxing really would benefit from a heavyweight class of 206 to 225 or 230