Francis Ngannou is set to face Tyson Fury on October 28th in Saudi Arabia. It’s a big fight, but few are giving Ngannou much of a chance against Fury.
The general consensus: Fury is just too slick and talented of a boxer to fall for anything Ngannou could deliver in his first pro boxing fight. So right now there’s a lot of effort being put into selling this bout as potentially competitive.
Francis Ngnanou’s celebrity coach for this crossover bout is none other than “Iron” Mike Tyson. In a new episode of his Hotboxin’ podcast, Tyson made the case for certain standout MMA fighters crossing over to boxing and doing well. He cited Conor McGregor vs. Floyd Mayweather as an example.
“This is what you have to look at too when you think about him fighting Tyson Fury, right? Conor McGregor went 10 rounds with Floyd Mayweather,” Tyson said. “The greatest fighter of his generation, if not all time. If that can happen, why can’t he give Tyson a capable fight?”
“Floyd Mayweather is the greatest fighter in the world as far as technique and style goes,” he continued. “So why doesn’t he have a chance if McGregor did well and made a great account of himself? Everybody respects him for his efforts. Nobody is saying ‘Oh, he’s a b—h.’ No one is saying that.”
Well, nobody except Floyd Mayweather himself, who claimed he carried McGregor into the later rounds before earning a TKO victory. Less flagrant but no less critical is Matchroom Boxing promoter Eddie Hearn, who has had just about enough of all these mixed martial artists trying to cash in on boxing.
“The problem is, they’re not very good,” he said on a recent episode of The MMA Hour. “And if you do that and get exposed as having no chance, so the mystery of, ‘Can he? Can he punch hard?’ [is gone].”
“When you actually see the fight, you’re going to realize very quickly as we did with Floyd and Conor: they can’t win,” Hearn added. “And that was a lot more competitive than this is going to be. Yes, one punch knockout power and stuff like that. But it’s boxing vs. MMA. It’s absolutely irrelevant.”
It won’t be irrelevant to Francis Ngannou’s bank account. “The Predator” is set to make money in the eight-figure region. Will that be $10 million or closer to $20 million? It all depends on how big of a spectacle this fight with Tyson Fury becomes as the date approaches, and how relevant fans believe the fight is when it comes down to ordering the pay-per-view or not.
This story originally appeared on MMA Mania
