These are wild times in heavyweight boxing, unprecedented, and where Francis Ngannou stands today might be the best way to sum it all up.
Saudi Arabia’s General Entertainment Authority is making dream fights reality as part of its lavish ‘Riyadh Season’, and the latest plan has boxing novice Ngannou on the brink of a quite incredible achievement.
Former UFC heavyweight king Ngannou has boxed just once as a professional, and yet he is only two fights away from becoming his new sport’s undisputed heavyweight champion. Absolutely mind-blowing stuff.
So how could this happen? Well it started last October when Ngannou shocked the world in almost taking away the unbeaten record of WBC and lineal heavyweight champion Tyson Fury. Discounted by most pundits, and the bookmakers, Ngannou had ‘The Gypsy King’ on the floor early and only lost via a controversial split decision.
That set ‘The Predator’ up for another marquee fight, this time against another two-time British world heavyweight king – Anthony Joshua. And here is where it gets REALLY interesting.
Ngannou’s route to Undisputed
General Entertainment Authority mastermind Turki Alalshikh revealed this week that he wants the winner of Joshua vs Ngannou to next fight the winner of that February 17 Fury vs Oleksandr Usyk unification match.
So there you have it – there is a route, and a clear route – by which Ngannou could be undisputed heavyweight champion of the world after just three professional fights, by the end of 2024.
Ngannou himself is remaining grounded despite the lavish praise which came his way at Monday’s press conference to announce his next fight – notably from Joshua’s promoter Eddie Hearn. He admitted he’d got it wrong after completely writing off Ngannou ahead of the Fury fight.
Ngannou though said: “I’ve been sitting here and listening to people talking and even Eddie praising me, and I appreciate that, but at the same time, I am not sure if he wants me to sleep on his guy – but that’s not going to happen. I am just a beginner out here that’s going to train really hard and do everything as the underdog to win the fight.
“I don’t take my last fight as a reference, I know exactly where I am at, I’m going to get better and better and that’s how I see things. I’m preparing for a tough fight, the Fury fight was great, but that’s in the past and I have a new challenge in front of me, and I take it more serious now than before because now I think there’s something more on the line, which is probably the Undisputed fight.
“So let’s see, I will do something that no-one has done before and I believe I have the tools to do that, starting with having the win over ‘AJ’ on March 8 in a big fight – not an easy fight, but a possible one and I am going to take it.”
Testing Joshua’s chin
Ngannou explained in very simple terms what his gameplan will be against Joshua – he will look to test the chin of a man who remember was stopped in sensational style by Andy Ruiz Jr at Madison Square Garden back in 2019.
“I’m going to fight him, so what do you think I am going to do? I will look for his chin. That’s what you do in a fight, you try to hit someone on the chin or wherever to try to hurt him. I heard he doesn’t have a chin, I don’t know if it’s true or not, we’re going to find out and I hope that I have the opportunity to test that – that’s my wish.”
