Tyson Fury and everyone else devoted to boxing should be embarrassed.
The unbeaten heavyweight champion of the world went down and had to rally to eke out a split decision victory over an opponent, former UFC champion Francis Ngannou, who was making his professional boxing debut.
As someone said on X: “MMA won tonight.” And boxing lost.
First, Ngannou deserves unreserved credit. The Cameroonian pointed out repeatedly that he started his combat sports career as a boxer and insisted he would perform better against Fury than many expected him to.
He did. The knockdown in Round 3, the result of a big left hand, was the most memorable moment of the fight but, overall, he competed with the top big man of the era on even terms. I, for one, am in awe of that accomplishment.
With that being acknowledged, the competitive nature of the fight was more a result of Fury’s failures than anything Ngannou did. I believe Fury committed two cardinal sins, which are intertwined.
One, he underestimated Ngannou. He thought he could roll bleary-eyed out of the bed and win the fight with one hand tied behind his back, which seemed to be the prevailing “wisdom.”
“He’s a hell of a fighter and a hell of a lot better boxer than we thought he would be,” Fury said afterward.
Fury’s team was so confident that he would win that they announced an agreement for an upcoming fight against Oleksandr Usyk for the undisputed championship this winter, although a cut on his forehead might need more time to heal.
As a result, he obviously didn’t prepare properly for the fight on Saturday.
As former champ Lennox Lewis said in an interview with TNT: “The fundamentals weren’t there from him. He wasn’t 100 percent. This was like a warmup fight to the big fight for me.”
I thought of Floyd Mayweather’s performance against another MMA fighter making his boxing debut, Conor McGregor. The 40-year-old Hall of Famer didn’t look like he did in his prime, but he clearly was ready to fight, which should’ve been a lesson for Fury.
Ngannou wasn’t robbed, as many are insisting. It was a closely contested fight that could’ve gone either way.
Fury (34-0-1, 24 KOs) lost a great deal, however.
The Englishman remains a heavyweight titleholder and will be a first-ballot Hall of Famer but his weak performance against an opponent from a different sport has left an indelible black mark on his legacy. I’ll never look at him the same.
He also has to live with the fact that he let his sport down. Our best heavyweight almost losing to an MMA fighter? Boxing took one on the chin.
Fury can bounce back from this. He could beat the universally respected Usyk and become undisputed champion. He could then meet Ngannou a second time and win convincingly, which would alleviate some of the embarrassment from Saturday night.
And make no mistake: A fully prepared, fully motivated Fury would not look anything like the lost soul we saw in Saudi Arabia. He would defeat Ngannou handily.
That’s what it would take to put this debacle completely behind Fury and the rest of us.
For more on the matchup, visit MMA Junkie’s event hub for Fury vs. Ngannou.
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