“It’s not a gimmick,” Anthony Joshua said as he considered the surreal challenge he faces in Riyadh on Friday night against Francis Ngannou, a former mixed martial artist who has lost his solitary bout as a professional boxer. “This is a serious fight with someone who is prepared and understands the dynamics of boxing after he put up a good fight against an apparently generational great,” Joshua said. “I look at it now as something completely different.”
Before Ngannou shocked Tyson Fury by dropping the WBC world heavyweight champion in the third round of his pro debut last October, words like “gimmick”, “stunt” and “charade” had been used to describe that crossover contest. Joshua settled on “gimmick” when he had first been approached with an offer to fight Ngannou, who was then the heavyweight champion of the UFC, the juggernaut organisation of mixed martial arts.
