By Ricardo Lezama Ngannou won a moral victory against Tyson Fury, with a split decision loss that included a knockdown of Tyson Fury with a counter left-hook. Fury for his part was befuddled because the lack of preparation, nutrition and obesity with which he presented himself to the ring finally caught up with Fury when facing a world class athlete in Ngannou.
Moral Victory
We think it’s legitimate that Fury won by points. However, a close scrap with a well trained newcomer was not in the cards.
Surprisingly, Francis Ngannou silenced many naysayers as the lack of a knockout from Fury on Ngannou. Fury has been knocked down already in his career. Whenever his conditioning suffers, Fury becomes very vulnerable and its entirely possible that he trained very little for Ngannou.
Despite the knockdown, the greater issue is that the fight had a spike in activity but was mostly an oddity with Francis not throwing any punches for the last portion of the battle.
Prior to the knockdown, Fury was essentially on cruise control and pressed the action landing double the amount of punches that Francis Ngannou.
Eddie Hearn Chimes In
For his part, Matchroom promoter, Eddie Hearn, noted that Tyson Fury looked terrible and that Ngannou likely won by 2 rounds. The polemical split decision in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, favoring Fury seems worse when considering that the lineal championship should have disposed of the MMA fighter easily via knockout.
As a result, Hearn has felt emboldened in a DAZN broadcast earlier today to call out a potential Anthony Joshua vs. Tyson Fury fight or Anthony Joshua vs Francis Ngannou. Given the highlight reel knockdown of Fury by Ngannou, no lineal heavyweight champion looks so sturdy now as Usyk is relatively undersized, Joshua has been KO’ed and Fury’s skills seem to have atrophied due to neglect.
The Boxing/MMA World React
Some people were surprised by the Fury victory. Among them, Canelo, but perhaps because the whole affair of crossover boxing is odd.
Oleksander Usyk was also shocked at the very sight of a knockdown. Fury’s management is likely to withdraw Fury from a more competitive bout against Usyk.
