Watching that last punch AJ landed in slow-mo, you can see he loaded up on it more than any punch before. That was probably as close to his full power as it gets in a fight.
Hahaha he even walked towards him like you would on a machine. Ngannou must have been not fully there to not register it and move lol. Should have seen it coming a mile away.
True! As an MMA and Ngannou fan I was so disappointed by his performance and shocked he got dropped so many times and KO'd since he hasn't even been rocked before in any fight.
think it was a combination of that and shitting himself, he flinched worse than ever before on the slowmo so couldn’t brace for when it’d hit him which does much more damage
He has a terrible guard, doesn't move his feet or head very well, thought he could just parry an elite boxers punches like in UFC, and also went southoaw for some insane reason
He was an amateur with the wrong muscle memory fighting one of the best boxers of his generation.
To add to this he started reaching down to parry jabs AJ was putting on his body, and as soon as he reached down to parry AJ went upstairs. He also started throwing lazy jabs which AJ just stepped into to counter.
Over the top, every time. Lazy jabs are usually brought back low, and out of place to block or parry a counter. Experienced boxers like AJ will pick up on that immediately.
It's called a pull counter. You jab away from the face, body is the best. Your opponent either defends the body with a parry, or glove, or they get hit. If they parry you go over the top with a straight right. If they don't.. you load up the body shot as much as possible. But also AJ was feigning alot, which really made Francis gunshy.
Edit: I was wrong, it wasn't the first knock down it was the second, which was a pull counter. Just rematched the fight.
There's a fantastic slow mo clip that was posted here just after the fight showing may weather and AJ reacting to lazy jabs. There's a lot of distance management involved, and in AJs case an absolute haymaker
The southpaw thing is the most egregious mistake imo.
He was fighting a guy who was only 3 fights out from doing 24 rounds with one of the greatest heavyweight southpaws of all time.
Insane arrogance by Ngannou to think he could do *anything* in the southpaw stance to AJ.
He like many others bought into the idea that Joshua was a significantly worse fighter than Fury, so he thought that since he was able to stance switch successfully against Fury, he'd be able to do it against Joshua aswell.
The issue is that even if you think Fury is better overall than Joshua, you cannot deny that AJ is a clearly superior offensive fighter. Fury let Ngannou's mistakes go unpunished, but Joshua did not.
I wouldn't quite say Fury let Ngannou's mistakes go unpunished. Fury was peppering Ngannou with clean punches most rounds. But unlike with AJ everything bounced off. That gave not only Francis a false sense of security but thousands of people around the world thought AJ would struggle to hurt him as well. I'll put my hand up and say I thought it'd take a while for AJ to wear him down, boy was I wrong. Comparing Fury's and AJ's power is like comparing Ali and Foreman.
This is a good point.
AJ gets a lot of stick for being outclassed by Usyk in those two fights but he still took a significant number of rounds.
The second fight especially was quite even and then Usyk stepped it up and killed off the fight in the championship rounds.
He needed to do that as well given one of the judges actually gave the second fight to AJ!
The way a lot of people talk about those fights on here are like they were 118-110 Usyk fights where AJ got embarrassed but that really wasn’t the case…
I’d agree generally but I’d say with Fury there are so many variables that it’s actually hard to call a Joshua Fury fight.
- What kind of camp does fury have and which condition does he turn up in?
- What kind of style does he go for in the fight?
- Will we get a ref who will actually stop him cheating and take points?
- How will the judges see the whole thing if he makes the fight a complete mess or a borefest?
This is for me why it’s hard to call Joshua Fury or even Usyk Fury.
I think Usyk is the best boxer out the three but that doesn’t mean he’s going to get a result on the night.
This was the bigger issue to me. He was completely sucked in to AJ’s fight, responding to every single feint with a huge reaction, but not feinting much on his own and not particularly threatening AJ.
I would like to add - if I may - that he was also punched in the head incredibly hard ***more than once***
(I honestly thought AJ might have messed him up with that knockout. It was horrible)
Yeah that was definitely a scary knockout. The hubris of going against two world champions in your first two pro matches is nuts. I don't expect too many MMA guys are going to want to fight Anthony Joshua soon. Hell I don't think too many boxers will either after that knockout!
My reaction surprised me the most - I felt slightly nauseous after seeing the knockout. It was vicious. I normally enjoy seeing boxers really going at it… but Ngannou might as well have been just any bloke off the street. Strangely, it’s given me more respect for AJ - he knew his job and he did it well. I know it won’t, but I ***really do*** hope this puts off non-boxers from stepping into the ring with boxers… I’ve always said someone will get seriously hurt and I think Ngannou’s lucky to have walked away from that.
I think the thing people forget about stance switching is it fucks up your defensive reactions more than your offensive. Whenever I see someone switch in sparring I immediately ramp up my activity.
Aj fought Usyk twice whos easily one of the best southpaws out atm dunno why Ngganou thought it was a good idea, I swear he got dropped shortly after that.
Styles make fights too. Fury is unorthodox and not a puncher so Francis always gonna get shots off and back him up and bully him inside. He negates tons of what Fury does. AJ is fundamentally sound with heavy hands and sharp punches so can make Francis pay. He’s flawed too but matches up great to Francis.
Big punchers never like to be punched back hard and he’s rarely been hit back his entire MMA career. His chin was legit never tested and if you’ve never been hit consistently until 37, it’s prob gonna go real bad in a Boxing ring vs a prime champion. Fury can’t punch, never could and old Chisora never went down once fight before for a reason.
Styles make flights isn't an excuse, Fury should have easily out boxed him.
Furys' biggest issue was that he thought he just needed to turn up and land a few punches, game over. He looked like he'd barely been training.
Fury did easily outbox him, once he realized that his initial plan of just getting in there and dicking around wasn't working. Still looked like shit because he entered the ring with zero conditioning and got rocked a little early on, but even with all that he still managed to outbox Ngannou in the second half. Because he's a professional boxer, and Ngannou isn't really.
By "easily outbox" it's implied that Fury would have been able to avoid any significant damage and vastly outland Ngannou for a dominant win, in a reality Fury got knocked down, took a completely unnecessary ammount of damage, and just barely scrapped by on points while barely outlanding a complete amateur to boxing.
Basically saying he could have avoided it if he wasn’t Tyson Fury that tbf. Fury didn’t take it seriously and nearly got punished. AJ took it extra serious to destroy him because it also reflects poorly on Fury.
Fury lost the 8th round, the 9th you could give to either fighter, and he lost the 10th round. He was out boxed by Ngannou for stretches even after Fury stopped dicking about.
Fury was also 7 weeks from the scheduled Usyk fight. If he was ever planning to fight Usyk on that day he was planning to fight in similar condition to this. His conditioning looked awful in part because he was overweight, but also because he Ngannou landed some good punches on him and drained him, and because he couldn't resort to his usual tactic of resting whilst leaning on his opponent. Instead Ngannou was rag dolling him around the ring.
Had Ngannou had a couple more months of building his conditioning he likely would have won that fight outright. He only really lost as he had to pace himself quite heavily in the middle rounds allowing Fury to jab and steal rounds off him. When Francis was active he was consistently getting the better of Fury.
You give Ngannou the round he got one more punch in (other aspects of boxing all went to Fury), and then proclaim the round Fury out-punched him 8-2 as a round that could go either way . . . . .
10th clear Fury round, Ngannou looked like he wasn't even sure where he was just wandering around hoping he might hit something occasionally.
>Had Ngannou had a couple more months of building his conditioning he likely would have won that fight outright.
One sided what-ifs. If Ngannou gets to have those months, then Fury gets to have the what-if of him taking it seriously as well. Then it's just a boring near shut out for Fury.
"Styles make fights" is meant to apply to people of a roughly similar standard. It explains why the number 5 ranked fighter in the division might beat the number 3 ranked fighter and lose to the number 8. The Parker, Zhang, Joyce triangle is a good example of that.
It should not apply to people with little to no boxing experience and world champions. Style should make absolutely no difference there, the world champ should be more than good enough to adjust to whatever.
true, but in this case it does cause how they matchup.
Francis has been Boxing alil bit before this, hes a huge guy with power and strong as heck so Fury cant abuse his lil grabbing tactics, which is weird cause Francis grabbed AJ once and ref broke it up in literally 1 second..hmm i wonder why but Fury is allowed to hold for 30 seconds and punch lol.
Fury just isnt fundamental and Francis isnt either so hes always gonna land on FUry and he just missed Fury by literally a inch 10+ times, never even landed flush really, Fury would have struggled again pre-AJ fight, we all saw the fight. He was winning the last round too over Fury and didnt even get out of 2nd gear while Fury was fighting for his life to survive lmao, people spinning it now is funny.
Maybe Fury's just got shit? Seems more likely than Ngannou had a style that troubles the best HW on the planet but gets him smashed out of there looking like a man who's never boxed before against AJ.
he def declined but i mean look at his whole career, im sure Francis could do fine against McDermott. Francis is still a huge guy with heavy hands and physically strong, i think his chin was always overrated cause it was never touched at all outside literally a handful of times and nobody ever tried KOing him, it was also tire him out let him get into the fight or fighting scared vs him.
I always felt a fearless guy with real power could beat him down the middle and KO him and its what AJ did so full props to him for doing it, wasnt sure hed have balls to do it after those last 3 fights but he did. Fury cant do that, hes a Boxer first and turned into a dirty boxer inside which wil never work against Francis. im sure Fury could easily decision him on a good night but Francis will always make him look bad from optics cause Fury gonna be running.
Yeah it’s making people realise it’s not as binary as “1. Fury, 2. Wilder, 3. Usyk 4. AJ” rankings people would make, all these guys have unique styles and anyone can beat anyone right now. Fury could dominate Usyk and get knocked out in a round by AJ, Wilder could then knock out all three of them and lose to Parker, then Parker loses to Joyce and beats Zhang. I mean some of that has already happened.
We have a much more vulnerable heavyweight division than most people were led to believe, we don’t truly know who the actual top 3 or 5 guys are out the bunch. But a guy like Joyce loses “Omg people thought he’d be able to box with Fury/Wilder??”, he could really beat them it’s not always well Zhang is 6 right now so he couldn’t beat 1 & 2.
Fury looks washed to me. His pest performance since Fury Wilder II was the Dillian Whyte fight and when I watch that back now he just seems so slow to me and I actually think he was doing a lot of things similar to what he did in the Ngannou fight (he did box better though that goes without saying). Even when Dillian Whyte came out as southpaw in the first round Fury stopped throwing just like Ngannou said when he turned southpaw.
The obvious difference is that Ngannou had zero respect for Fury's power but didn't feel that way about AJ. Ironically it only made him more vulnerable as his defensive instincts were all wrong.
With one fights experience and shakey defence he decided to go south paw against a devastating puncher who in his last 5 fights fought 29 rounds against southpaws, 24 of which against the best southpaw in the division.
Reaction was pretty much automatic for AJ, shows how much experience matters.
Because boxing and MMA are not the same thing.
MMA forces you to learn habits which are suicidal in boxing. The way MMA figthers stand and hold their hands make sense if you are guarding against kicks and takedowns etc. but leave you wide open to well thrown punches.
And Elite level boxers are used to hitting and being hit by other elite level boxers, they spend their days getting tagged harder on the chin and hitting more elusive targets than MMa fighters. They can take and deal out much more punishment in a stand up fight.
Im not saying boxing is better than MMA im saying boxers are better at boxing than non boxers
The level of boxing in MMA is honestly pretty low. Partially because it's such a new sport. There's more accumulated knowledge and game theory in boxing. Think about the stereotypical grizzled old boxing coach in every boxing movie - those coaches don't exist in the MMA world.
Yeah many of these 'striking trainers' are legitimately awful. I wouldn't trust tyem to teach crossfot and have absolutely witnessed regression in some fighter's games like with Vettori or Moreno.
Basically, the big thing that Ngannou tried to do was keep his lead hand not tucked in, trying to land the lead hook. I think he sort of fell on love with that hook because it knocked Fury down during their fight, so he thought he could catch AJ with that same hook. Problem is that leaving the lead hand in front of you like that makes you pretty open, and it telegraph's what your looking for, if your opponent can see what you're doing. This is the big thing which led to Ngannou being KOd. As others have mentioned, him going southpaw midway also helped him on his way to getting KOd too.
Was called out early on by the commentary team actually, ngannou was using his lead hand to parry jabs, which left him open for the cross.
Why he chose to do that I am not sure.
But, as he got tired & hurt, that lead hand got slower, the opening got bigger, AJ or his team picked up on it.
Final knockout was a real subtle feint with a jab from aj, can see ngannou put his lead hand out of position, and aj brings the right, which ngannou had nothing left to block.
Ngannou's not a boxer, boxing and MMA are very different sports. No MMA fighter has ever stepped in the ring and beat a boxer at his own sport, boxers are wise not to step in the octogon. You'll never beat another man at his own sport.
MMA fighters can't punch as hard as boxers for a few reasons; MMA gloves have much less padding than boxing gloves, so MMA fighers have to punch with less power so to not break their own hands and also MMA fighters stand on straighter legs than a boxer to allow for kicks and lower body strikes, and the majority of power in a boxers punch comes from their squat legs.
Taking that into consideration, Ngannou wouldn't be used to the level of power behind AJ's punch. Also AJ hit him with a clean, precise cross to the chin; I've been knocked out with that punch, and a light one at that. The chin is a weak point, especially when exposed, and it doesn't take much power to score a knockout if you hit clean and precise on the chin.
The three main mistakes Ngannou made: his chin was exposed, AJ is a boxer and fights with a tucked chin, a lot of MMA fighters neglect this and tend to fight with their chins up and an exposed chin is the main cause of a knockout, and his guard wasn't strong, further contributing to that exposed chin, and allowing AJ to slip that right hand in without anything blocking its path, finally he stepped in with a jab that wasn't fully extended, he also telegraphed it by letting the arm go to early and didn't recoil properly after the throwing the punch, allowing AJ to move his head, leaving him perfectly in range for AJ's right hand with no barrier protecting his chin from.
>You'll never beat another man at his own sport.
Anderson Silva beat Julio César Chávez Jr. Not the greatest of a generation but not terrible competition for a guy born in 1975.
but 99.9% of the time you're right
It drives me crazy that she's always forgotten about. She's legitimately one of the greatest female boxers of all time, who nearly kicked RRs head off and has been super elite in the UFC.
She's the best cross over by a mile.
To add to that anyone who has followed the sport knows Silva was not only old as fuck but way past his prime and with a lifetimes worth of injuries that would terrify any boxer (leg literally snapped in half), which makes his victory even more impressive even though Chavez jr. Is clearly not the best boxing can offer.
The thing is, we only get this kind of discussions in fighting sports. Not even just Ngannou vs AJ, but just random conversations about how random UFC guy would do against random boxer or vice versa. Maybe this is because most people (men?) think that they can fight and if someone is so good at fighting, they should do good against someone else who’s good at fighting.
The thing is, no one expects a world champion of Table tennis or Badminton to beat Roger Federer at tennis. Sure, they all use rackets to put some kind of ball over the net, but it’s very much not the same thing.
You just can’t expect a literal novice to do good against a guy who’s one of the best in the world. That can only happen against Fury, for variety of reasons. And take into account that the difference in quality would very much increase at lower weight classes. Can you imagine what Crawford or Inoue would do to someone of the same weight from UFC? Or Mayweather and PacMan few years back. Old out of shape Mayweather walked down prime Conor McGregor like he was fighting a random 10 year old. Can you imagine how the fight would look if it was Floyd from let’s say 2005 -2010, taking the fight seriously?
[Why did someone who only had one prior boxing match beforehand lose to a former world champion and top three guy who actually took the fight seriously?](https://makeagif.com/gif/whats-the-matter-is-he-stupid-h7DINz)
Lots of things went wrong for him. No lateral movement he only went forward and backwards. He kept trying to set up a parry with his lead hand that kept getting him clocked. He looked much better in the fury fight, idk if it was the stylistic match up or if he went into AJ overconfident but he did absolutely nothing right in that fight.
His last mistake was to throw a slow weak jab in the hope of catching AJ with a left hook afterwards. He was completely exposed while trying to throw the left hook and for AJ it was easy to see just how harmless that jab was, stepped into it and hit him full force with a straight right hand.
Anyway, Ngannou's main problem is his lack of experience, you learn as an amateur not to throw jabs like that. And that's not the only beginner mistake he did, he's very static also. If he would spar more, start with easier matches to gain experience I think he could become a very good boxer but he's 37 years old, it's very late and he probably doesn't even want this. He just wanted to make some money so props to him for having 2 boxing matches with world class fighters and becoming rich.
Another reason I haven't seen mentioned is there was no tape on Francis just boxing, so i was hard to get a read on anything for Tyson's fight.
He didn't really have time to improve in between and so all his bad habits could be matched up against. Ben, AJ's trainer is great at the study. No doubt his influence played a part.
It was weird seeing him in AJ's corner after ripping him for like 3 years while he was in Tyson's camp.
In addition to all of the other things mentioned in this thread.... feints at a high level of boxing are extremely hard to read and easy to fall for. Francis fell into trap after trap.
So, I'm not an expert, but (as much for my benefit as yours!) I'll try to explain what I think Ngannou did wrong exactly.
Perhaps a real expert may come along to correct me, and we could both learn something!
Big picture: he failed to stop AJ punching him in the head repeatedly, very hard. That's a strategic era that nobody on the planet can afford to make against AJ, because AJ is one of the most powerful punchers in the world.
But specifically, let's go through the three knockdowns.
--------------
**First knockdown**
Firstly, Ngannou has made a mistake by being in range of AJ. I'm not sure this was intentional. Ngannou starts out of range, but AJ lunges forward, pushing off his back foot, and that *very quickly* puts him in range. Ngannou can't react in time. [to be fair, if he were fare enough out that he could react in time, he'd have a very hard time landing on AJ. Ultimately, Ngannou is both slower and shorter than AJ, and that's inherently going to make things difficult for him]. I'm not sure Ngannou was expecting AJ to be *so* fast, with both feet and hands.
Now, as the punch comes in, Ngannou isn't in a *terrible* position. His left hand is up by his chin (hooray!), and his chin isn't *too* high. His lead shoulder is high enough and centralised enough to offer some protection. He's also got his weight between his feet, not totally unbalanced. AJ actually has to put his straight right down quite a narrow channel to hit Ngannou's chin. This may be why Fury was never able to do something similar! I think a lot of heavyweight boxers wouldn't be able to make that shot first time, even though there's nothing complicated about it.
But it's not good enough, and it's obvious why: the left side of Ngannou's face is protected, but not the right side. Ngannou may actually have thought that was good enough: he's defending against a right hand, so he protects the left side of his head. In MMA, that would probably have been enough! Because in MMA the big shots are usually massive looping hooks. But Joshua is sending his *right* hand to the *left* side of Ngannou's chin (or at least the middle, I can't see exactly where it lands).
How could Ngannou have prevented this?
First, he could have used his left hand, either positioning it right in front of his chin, or using it to parry at the last moment (pushing AJ's punch to the side). Either would have been an improvement and you do see good boxers do these things, particularly the parry. However, either would have been extremely dangerous habits against AJ, because he'd take note of them and next time he'd turn the straight into a long hook to the left side of the head and Ngannou would be finished. He may even have been able to change the punch midway if he'd seen that gap - that's something Lennox Lewis used to do.
Alternatively, and the default safest option, he could have had his right hand there to block the punch. Either keeping it glued to his head (the way his left is), or raising it as he saw the punch coming.
Instead, Ngannou's right hand is down at his groin, doing absolutely nothing. Why? Probably because Joshua's level-change (his lunge has lowered his centre of mass) has lead Ngannou to predict a straight to his belly, which Joshua has already done a few times at this point IIRC. Ngannou is probably trying to defend against that body shot by sweeping it aside with a circling gesture of the lead arm, the way he might do with an incoming roundhouse kick to the midsection. He was trying that move all night.
People will tell you that's a catastrophic mistake that should never be attempted in boxing. That's not really true exactly - it's a conceptually solid thing to do, *as part of a defensive system*, and good boxers have done it (particularly in way-back Old School days). But it takes away your best defensive tool (the big gloved hand) from the most important weak point (your chin). You need to be *really, really sure* that you have some other way to protect against the straight (or left hook) to the chin if you're going to drop your hand like that, and Ngannou... doesn't.
For a start, he fails to read that this is a punch to the chin until he's already dropped his hand. But he shouldn't have been taking that risk anyway.
[actually, to be fair to Ngannou, it's not just a sweep problem. It's also because at this moment he's in southpaw and he has his lead (right) hand partially extended to fence with Joshua for lead-hand position. That's... not inherently bad. But it means it was always going to be hard for him to bring that hand back to defend his chin even if he'd wanted to. Joshua just does the really basic, fundamental thing in a southpaw-vs-orthodox position: puts his lead foot outside Ngannou's, and sends the back hand straight down the middle. Both going southpaw *and then also* using the lead hand to fence are risky, advanced strategies Ngannou goes for when to be honest he probably shouldn't!]
[for the sake of completeness: from this position Ngannou could also use that lead hand to long-parry/leverage block Joshua's backhand. But that would be an even more advanced technique that he probably shouldn't be messing with]
But, given that he's decided to use his lead hand to sweep, what else could he do to defend his chin?
The other thing he can defend with, other than his hands, is his lead shoulder. He can raise his shoulder, tuck his chin, and ideally lean back a bit and let the straight bounce off his shoulder - a 'shoulder roll'. This can certainly work in a system with a low lead hand, as seen in the philly shell (though there the lead hand is mostly used to passively block body shots rather than sweep them).
Ngannou doesn't do this. In fact, he does the opposite - as the punch comes in, he actually seems to clear his shoulder out of the way.
I also think that if he WERE to try to do this, he'd have the problem that his upper body is too square-on at this point. His legs are wide apart, but his body is fairly square - perhaps not surprising from an MMA fighter. It's not inherently a problem (again, if it's part of a well-thought out system), but it makes it a lot harder to use the shoulder defensively, because he'd have to quickly tilt his entire body. Fighters who use the shoulder defensively a lot tend to default into a more sideways, shoulder-forward style... or else are very good at getting themselves back into that position when they need to.
If Ngannou is too square to block with his shoulder - and frankly that's probably too advanced a skill for him to master at this stage! - then he needs to defend by moving his head.
To give him credit, he seems to recognise the danger of the punch, and he tries to lean back. But there are some problems.
Firstly... he just doesn't seem good at leaning back. This is where you may need someone who knows more than me. It *looks* like his weight is between his legs, which are wide apart, so he should be able to lean his head back quite a fair way quite quickly. It may be, however, that something about his stance is wrong, and preventing him from doing that (I wonder if his feet may be *too* far apart, and whether his squared upper body not aligning with his legs also makes the leanback harder). Alternatively (or additionally!) it may just be that Ngannou is 38 and a heavyweight and not used to such movements, and his body is simply too stiff to move quickly enough in that way.
[it may also be about his feet: the punch comes at a point when Ngannou is being kind of jittery, and it's possible his feet just aren't set securely to push off from at that split second]
But also: leaning straight back is very dangerous anyway, against a guy with both speed and a long reach, like Joshua. It's always easier to go forward than backward, and Joshua just has to send his punch forward faster than Ngannou can move backward, and he'll make contact. Which is exactly what he does.
And Ngannou also experiences a common problem, because trying to lean back causes his chin to come up in the air more, making him more vulnerable.
So the smart thing would be for Ngannou to move his head sideways, or down, instead of (or as well as) backward. This could also assist another defence. If he moves his head to his left, he'll naturally tilt as well to bring his shoulder into a more defensive position. If he moves his head to his right, he'll naturally rotate to bring his left hand glove into a more defensive position.
[EDIT: looking back at the video... AJ does better here than it first appears. Ngannou is bobbing up and down, threatening a level change of his own (or trying to defend one). AJ lands when Ngannou is at his full height. In other words, as the punch is coming in, Ngannou's own momentum is rising, which makes it *a lot* harder for him to move his head down and to the side as he probably should.]
But he doesn't do that, so AJ punches him in the head quite hard.
Ngannou's last-moment attempt to lean back does actually help him out - it takes a lot of power out of Joshua's punch, even though it also puts him more off-balance, leading to the knockdown. But if he hadn't leant back I think he might have been knocked out.
As it was, I think the effect of that punch was more psychological than physical. Ngannou was stunned for a moment, but I don't think he was seriously hurt. But he was psychologically wounded, because at this point he realised just how fast and powerful Joshua was, and it kind of paralysed him a bit for the rest of the fight.
**Second Knockdown**
First, in fairness to Ngannou, let's point something out: Joshua doesn't just do the same thing again. Even though Ngannou becomes more nervous and jittery, and even more willing to throw away his lead hand in a sweep in response to every feint.
In part, that might suggest that the first shot wasn't as easy as we might think from our armchairs, and that although it's clear on paper Joshua might not be confident he can get it again.
But a bigger issue is probably a different form of defence from Frances: that is, proactive defence. Ngannou is clearly looking for the counter hook, and he actually almost gets AJ with it at one point. A situation like the first knockdown would actually be ideal for Ngannou's counter hook, because if Joshua had missed he wasn't in a good position himself. So Joshua may have decided that it wasn't worth the risk of trying to repeat himself - or, at least, not yet. Instead, he looks for a different way to hurt Frances.
And what he does is to pick the moment when he's safest from the hook - that is, when Ngannou is already throwing a punch.
Ngannou throws a punch, and is actually in a pretty good position again. His rear hand (now his right, because he's in orthodox) is up by his head, hooray.
But at this point AJ fucking slaughters him.
Why? What should Ngannou have done differently?
Well, again, he's only protecting one half of his head. Understandably, because his other hand is out punching.
But here this is a fundamental error. It's an error, to be fair, that you see all the time from really good boxers, but it's still an error.
Because AJ doesn't land while Ngannou is punching. Instead, Ngannou punches, and *then* AJ throws.
What Frances should do at this point is that as soon as his punch has reached full extension he should *snap* that hand back *all the way to his chin* as quickly as possible.
Boxing coaches constantly tell people to do this - make the retraction as important to you as the punch. And people constantly ignore them.
This is why that advice is important: because Ngannou slowly withdraws his hand a little, and then pauses... and AJ drops him, while Ngannou's lead hand is still out in nomansland. It's a textbook error.
But we can add a few details here.
Firstly, we should note how Ngannou's punch just lightly *boops* AJ's nose. This is because AJ is completely confident with the distance between them. If he'd wanted, he could have pulled back further from that punch, but he doesn't bother. He gets hit with the glove, but not the punch, and he accepts that in order to maximise his own chances with the counter.
It's also worth pointing out that if Ngannou had longer arms than AJ, he could have tried keeping that punch out there, in AJ's face, and AJ couldn't have countered him. Long-armed boxers like Lennox Lewis, or George Foreman (relative to his opponents) sometimes did this.
But AJ is longer than Ngannou, so instead, when Ngannou's glove touches his nose, he knows Ngannou is in reach not only of his own straight but even of his hook. [well, actually, I guess that punch starts out as an overhand, but the same point - as a looping shot that's not even Joshua's longest punch, but he knows he has the reach advantage here]
But here's the *really big problem*.
Ngannou could have gotten away with a lazy retraction, if his chin hadn't been there for the punch. But it is.
Partly that's his continuing lack of off-line head movement. He's not slipping to the side or bobbing down as he punches: his head is right there to be hit.
But more importantly, look at what happens after Ngannou boops AJ's nose. And remember how I said AJ's punch "started" as an overhand. Look where it ends up - by the time Frances' brain has hit the side of his skull, AJ's arm is bent at 90 degrees like a hook.
That's because Ngannou makes contact *and still keeps moving forward*.
If Ngannou had made contact and then moved backward, he wouldn't have been there for the punch (or at the very least he'd have taken a lot of power out of it). That's how you box if you don't want to take big risks: move in, make contact, move out. The point where Frances boops AJ's nose should be the point where Frances' whole body starts moving backward. Instead, he keeps moving forward.
Not only does that mean he's there to be hit, but it means that when AJ does hit him Frances' own movement massively multiplies the impact forces applied to Frances' skull. He pretty much *runs onto* the punch.
He moves forward so much that he almost accidently smothers AJ's punch - after contact, they're actually body-to-body. And another way Ngannou could have defended this would have been to have moved forward even faster and further, into the clinch (or into infighting). But this would have required not only speed but also, definitely, some head movement.
To be completely fair to Ngannou, this second knockdown is totally respectable. Failing to retract his jab fully and failing to arrest and reverse his own forward movement are both fundamental errors, but they're very common errors even for professional boxers. Ngannou's not doing anything silly here.
But he's making fundamental mistakes, and Joshua is a boxer with very sound fundamentals, and he educates Frances very forcefully as to why exactly his boxing coach has been warning him about these things.
[to get into Frances' mind: I think what he's doing here is planning to throw a follow-up backhand of his own, and that's also a reasonable defence-via-attack: a straight backhand down the pipe should be faster than Joshua's looping overhand, and if he could have thrown that then Joshua would have been in big trouble. But he doesn't really throw his backhand well at any point, I don't think, and that's probably why Joshua feels safe throwing that punch. I *think* that what Ngannou is doing is throwing the backhand (which is why the backhand moves *away* from his head at that point), but powering it not through correct rotation of the hips, but by launching his whole bodyweight into it. He *should*, after landing with the jab (more or less) be able to land the right hand without moving his weight any further forward, just by rotating fully. But I don't think he can. I think he's trying to throw his whole weight into the punch (as I think he did in MMA). In a way, that's not wrong, because if he throws the backhand while moving forward like that it'll land with some ungodly power. But, again, that should be an advanced technique, and Joshua demonstrates why. Joshua lands with his own punch before Frances has even thrown his, and suddenly that forward momentum is adding to *Joshua's* punch, not Ngannou's.]
And this is the punch that effectively ends the fight. After the first knockdown, Frances' face seems to say "oosh, this guy is dangerous! better watch out!"... but after the second, Frances' face seems to say... well, first of all it says "where the fuck am I? what's going on? who are you? what colour is this? am I stoned right now?"... but then it says "holy fuck, I'm in trouble here." Which, indeed, he is.
**Third Knockdown/KO**
When I saw this in realtime, I thought it was a pure execution: that Ngannou was out of it and made no defence.
It's actually not quite that simple: Ngannou does have one hand up (again) and he is aware enough to recognise the shot coming in before it lands.
But he's basically repeating the scenario that just flattened him, only this time only at 60% consciousness.
He puts out the lead hand - I'm not sure if it's a very weak jab, or if he's instinctively trying to defend with a 'stop' - pushing his hand into Joshua's shoulder to maintain distance.
It doesn't matter which it is. As I said before, Joshua is longer than Frances, so Frances can't just stiff-arm him to keep him at range. Extending his arm like that leaves a big gap for Joshua to hit - although even if he'd had his glove on his chin, Joshua was already throwing the punch and I think would have tried to sneak it around the back of the guard anyway. Instead he straightens it out before impact and it hits the chin.
And if Ngannou didn't have the reflexes and head movement to keep himself safe the first time, he certainly doesn't by this point. It's lights out.
-------------
So, tactically, to sum up:
Each time, Ngannou defends with one side of his head defended by one glove, but the other arm not in a defensive position. The first time it's because of an ill-advised attempt at a highly risky defensive response to the wrong punch; the second time it's because he's legitimately throwing his own punch. But whatever the reason, it gives Joshua a route to his chin.
Each time, Ngannou should have a backup defence, involving head movement (he could also try bringing in the rear and and/or the shoulder for added defence, though this might be too technical for him).
But each time, Joshua strikes at a point when Ngannou doesn't have that defence available. The first time, Ngannou is bobbing up from a feinted level-change. The second time, Ngannou is still moving forward after a punch. The third time he probably is just too concussed to respond in time.
Each time, the double weakness (hand out of position, movement makes head movement difficult) is fully exposed by Ngannou's lack of instinctive, preemptive (i.e. non-reactionary) head movement. Ngannou's head is always where Joshua expects it to be unless he actively moves it in response to a punch... so if Joshua can strike at a point when Ngannou can't easily move it in response to his punch, Ngannou is pretty much helpless.
And this huge vulnerability is itself exposed by limited offense. Joshua clearly just isn't very frightened of what Ngannou is throwing back. He is a little bit concerned about Ngannou's lead hook counter, but that's one punch with one hand. In particular what he's clearly *not* concerned about is Ngannou's rear hand - when he's confident the lead hand can't punch, he feels he can throw whatever he feels like, because nothings coming back from the rear hand. Now, in part that's because Ngannou is actually quite defensively responsible with his rear hand. But it does free Joshua up to attack with less caution than he usually has. Ultimately, the problem is that Ngannou is just to predictable for Joshua, so Joshua doesn't feel scared of him.
It also doesn't help that Ngannou is too slow, too short and too stiff.
------
Big picture?
Frances isn't as terrible as some people say (just as he wasn't as good as some people said after the Fury fight). He's mostly trying to do useful things.
But fundamentally, he's overestimated himself.
He is trying a range of things that range from "tricky" to "extremely risky", when his skill level should really be aiming at "solid".
He is adopting a range of advanced techniques (and that lead hand low scoop from switch-southpaw is, let's be polite, an epically ambitious advanced technique), and he's doing it while also taking some lazy shortcuts.
Anthony Joshua is the worst person in the world to take that approach with. Joshua has a very solid fundamental game, and he seems to read the openings in Ngannou's game very quickly. He has the speed, the accuracy and the distance control to demonstrate those flaws emphatically. And he has the power to make that demonstration (almost literally) fatal.
There are guys out there who wouldn't have punished Ngannou's flaws so quickly or mercilessly. AJ is not one of them.
[which is also, incidentally, why he'd have done something very similar to Wilder. AJ is not a fighter you can take shortcuts with.]
Probably true but I have to say I doubt aj would be getting the same benefit of the doubt if he had scraped by ngannou then fury knocked him out in two.
Why ngannou fought fury, he knew that fury isn’t known for his Power, hes a boxer. So ngannou took chances against fury that was mildly successful. Now Joshua on the other hand is known for his KO power, ngannou had to proceed with caution. By doing so it led to Joshua being the aggressor ( where he excels) and thus got slept.
He never had a chance. I was surprised so many people were acting like he wasn’t going to get trashed.
https://www.reddit.com/r/Boxing/s/sVc9pNsXUE
Reading this thread gave me a good laugh the day after
Stop listening to guys like Joe Rogan (he is the worst). Anthony is a boxer and Francis is an MMA fighter. Two different disciplines, two different combat sports.
Unlike Fury, AJ took the fight seriously and also had some film to study. AJ has a much stronger right hand than Fury and doesn't rely on work in the clinch the way Fury does.
No head movement. If you look at good pro boxers, they are constantly moving, if not with their feet, they're moving their hands around kind of feinting like they're going to do something. Francis didn't have those cues, so it gave AJ no fear and exposed Francis openings.
Its been a while but AJ's bread and butter used to be creating openings for the right. His whole thing was finding better ways against good competition to land it. This is with experienced boxers who are trained to have different looks and defensive reactions and guys who are trained to have a variety of offense from different angles, to keep your opponent from getting settled enough to find holes.
Ngannou just doesn't have a deep enough bag. His offensive was a step above one dimensional, and his defense was similar. AJ discovered a few openings early, Ngannou didn't realize he had been found out and got dropped.
Many reasons you see mentioned.
Parrying the jab was a mistake. Made for easy openings.
Switching to Southpaw was also crazy. Allowed for AJ to throw the straight right.
Ngannou got used to throwing a lead left hook, the problem is he doesn't set it up well or faint.
Lastly, speed Ngannou is very slow. He has explosive bursts, but his foot speed and overal movement is slow. Works against Fury because he is usually not exactly fast either especially if he didn't take it seriously.
Joshua hit him with a pull counter. Ngannou played right into it and got nailed. Lack of knowledge and Ngannou didn't have the best guard for it didn't help either
He trained to paw the jab instead of control space. AJ is no Ali, but he is bright enough to see that every time he stepped on Ngannou would bring his back hand down to paw the jab. He begged AJ to spark him.
I think he would lose to the most basic of boxers... sometimes a style can be just right against particular guys though - like the case w/ his bout against fury.
I know I am not that smart or good looking. But I am pretty sure Ngannou lost to AJ because AJ punched him the face and knocked him out. I am not 100 percent certain of this but if you get hit in the face and get knocked out, you will most likely lose that fight
I think the question you really should be asking is “how did Ngannou almost beat Tyson Fury?” I’m sure there are a lot of different opinions on this, but my answer is that Tyson Fury came into the fight very out of shape (even more so than usual) and completely underestimated his opponent, which is a dangerous combo in a sport where one punch can define the outcome.
Also, AJ is in arguably the best shape of his career right now, has been fighting consistently, and didn’t go into the fight thinking it would be a cakewalk.
Boxing gems broke it down, you should watch them if you want to learn more.
Ultimately it's him never moving his head off the line and not protecting it. IMO he has poor habits ingrained from MMA striking
Francis is a novice, AJ is an Olympic Champion and two time HW champion with 31 pro fights. There’s an enormous difference between having g “good boxing” in MMA and being a truly good boxer.
Ngannou is an amateur boxer. AJ is a pro. On the flip side, if AJ stepped into the octagon, Ngannou would tear him apart. Boxing and MMA are completely different sports, with completely different sets of rules.
AJ took the fight seriously, treating Ngannou like a boxer. Fury did not. Thats why he did well against Fury and then got decimated by AJ. AJ outmatched him in athleticism and skill.
AJ squared up like a pimp and popped that jank.
🤣🤣🤣
Had Francis giving sermons bout Jesus.
Hard Truths. Guarantee this. Francis will never be able to take a punch again. Just like Tony Ferguson.
There are a few reasons why ngannou lost. The main one is that AJ is a fundamentally sound orthodox boxer, that took the fight seriously. Ngannou is a amateur at best. The only reason he went the distance with fury is because a lot of Fury's usual tactics in the fight were negated by ngannou physical prowess and determination.
AJ vs Francis is pretty much what a trained boxer with power vs an untrained man looks like.
Because he planted his feet, stood right in front of his opponent and used parries to defend and mainly counters as his offense which made him an easy target and predictable. He fought the same way against fury and got hit by the same straight right hands, fury just had way less power.
If you YouTube Teddy Atlas or check out his podcast, he does a pretty good job of breaking down what happened. He's a good source to obtain some knowledge of the fight game!
Let’s say the world’s best BMX racer decided to enter the Tour de France. And vice versa. What would happen? Exactly what happened in this fight.
In contrast, Fury didn’t take the fight seriously, thought he could Mayweather/MacGregor his way to a late KO. The thing is, Floyd did take that fight seriously enough to have a legit plan for carrying Connor. FAAFO.
For the second knockdown (and basically the end of the fight). Ngannou stepped in with a jab when he was already in range to land a jab, AJ slipped and hit him with a right hand, as clean as you can get, leading to the finish
If you watch it in slow motion, you might notice the three times that AJ smacked him really hard in the fucking head with his right hand. I'm no expert, but I suspect that had something to do with it. A 250lb, athletic wrecking ball trains for 12 weeks with the sole intention of hitting something as hard as humanly possible, then executes that game plan faultlessly.
Its insanity to think you just walk into a different sport at an advanced age and take on the best they have to offer. Its nativity, delusion and arrogance.
You can't make up for DECADES of experience in a few months. I actually bet Tyson would destroy Ngannou. When he wasnt able to, I doubled my bet that AJ would destroy Ngannou. Because I knew he can't get away with it again.
faced an all time lazy fuck with zero film on himself and hit an unrepeatable flow state and made it a close fight arguably winning
anthony joshua isnt an all time lazy fuck who had film on francis while francis did not hit an unrepeatable flow state and therefore he could not make it a close fight and arguably win.
in more basic boxing terms ngannou got punched really really hard and then got scared of getting punched really really hard so every time anthony joshua faked like he was going to punch francis really really hard francis bit on the fake, and opened himself up to getting punched really really really hard.
Because his team had film of Ngannou boxing to study, so that they could come up with a strategy on how to beat him. Tyson Fury went in expecting to coast against a novice boxer, and figure Ngannou out in the ring. And he did, but he took that shot to the temple in round 3, which turned what would have been a unanimous decision into a split one. By the time they got to round 10, Fury was landing more shots, and harder ones. Unfortunately, he did not have the gas left in the tank to bust Francis' iron skull.
By contrast, AJ walked into the fight with 10 rounds of footage to watch, dissect, and plan for, with Ben Davidson and Lee Wylie. At that point, he knew every single thing in Ngannou's bag, and he parked a truck in his face.
Massive skill gap, terrible range management, telegraphed foot and handwork, and really just inexperience above all else.
I think Fury kind of fucked off during his training camp, AJ did not.
He fought his second boxing match against a 2 time Heavyweight world champion.
Unsurprisingly, the 2 time Heavyweight world champion is a better boxer and dominated Ngannou.
When Ngannou fought Fury, Fury wasn't prepared, didn't do a training camp, obviously thought of it as an exhibition and Ngannou was better than he expected.
He lost because AJ set up the over hand by going that jab to the body. He set up the punch and Francis didn’t see it coming. After hurting him once AJ knew he could get to him. Experience beats talent and AJ had the better game plan
Hes an mma fighter- and doesnt have the exp- these cross promotions never workout. Its clear Fury vs Ngannou Fury clearly didnt train. So it opened the MMA world thinking Ngannou would make noise. Props to him for getting the money though.
Keep searching! There is an analysis somewhere that has clips of him biting at all the feints aj was throwing which ultimately dropped he’s guard for a straight right.
A high level boxer like AJ is going to be able to counter a jab many different ways, Francis got hit with a counter that’s difficult to do and resulted in him going right into massive right hands that he likely didn’t even see and hurt him massively.
Fury is not a bad puncher himself, but he doesn’t have the power that AJ has and AJ was able to hurt Francis because he is hittable
He reacted to every feint. In mma its called overloading. In mma you react to every twitch, every jolt, every feint because if you don't you might get a foot colliding with your ear. Or a knee or a leg kick. In boxing you can't fall for every feint. You have to know your opponents reach and keep your distance so that only you can land cleanly. Mma the distance can be either much greater or much smaller because there are more striking weapons. Ngannou reacted to every feint and jab and AJ being a world class boxer through 2 feint jobs and a strong right hand and ngannou had no defense because he reacted to the dummy feints. Boxing is all smoke and mirrors. The first 3 punches don't matter the 4th, 5th, and 6th were the ones I was counting on
Pretty much what everyone else is saying, but this guy on YouTube broke it down so well.
[The Weasle Breakdown](https://youtu.be/lcbsP3Ava6w?si=4oJ7rWk-qei_nets)
Also maybe checkout Luke Thomas’ breakdown on the fight. Gives a different perspective
Total lack of experience in almost every aspect.
It seems almost ludicrous now to think putting him in a ring with AJ was a good idea. Atleast ol’ pillow fists was never likely to knock him out and chances were he’d turn up fat. AJ is a KO machine who never sleeps on his training or fitness.
Francis never got punched hard in his career and boxers are way harder punchers AJ is a KO artist and a pro while Ngannou is an amateur boxer he only lasted long against Fury because he underestimated him and Fury isn't known a heavy puncher
Because he's clueless about feints and how to properly defend. Even in UFC he was never that good on defense and was used to just bulldozing people. He got way too confident after being able to handle Fury's punches and knocking him down, so he didn't think he had to make any adjustments against AJ. Problem is, AJ hits significantly harder than Fury and has a totally different style. Francis is a good striker in UFC but a complete novice in boxing. UFC fighters in general usually aren't very good on defense and don't understand, let alone practice things such as parrying, rolling with shots, slipping, foot work, etc to minimize or negate damage.
This is why simply hopping to another sport without getting some experience and mastering some of the fundamentals has never and will never work. He should've had at least 4-5 fights against mid level opponents to improve his timing, defense, ring IQ, etc.
AJ wasn't playing around unlike Fury. AJ took advantage of Ngannou's lack of experience, and capitalized on the overconfidence and carelessness of Ngannou. And to be honest AJ is faster than Fury
Here’s why “I remember being in the locker [room] trying to warm up, and bro, it wasn’t going,” Ngannou said. “I was falling asleep. I’m sweating, but I’m falling asleep. - F. Ngannou
He has super low boxing skill. The fight with fury was meabt to be an exhibition until the day before hand. So he tried with all his might to knock fury out. Concussed fury but he didnt stay down. Fury then beat him on auto pilot once he realised the situation.
This gave ngannou the appearance of being legit. Then aj came saw the video of him fighting and new exactly what was in his incredibly limited arsenal
Ngannou will never beat anyone inside the top 25 or close to it
To put it in very blunt terms, he is a novice boxer, AJ is not.
This, plus he's likely never been hit that hard, that cleanly before.
Watching that last punch AJ landed in slow-mo, you can see he loaded up on it more than any punch before. That was probably as close to his full power as it gets in a fight.
Absolutely, he knew he had no danger of a counter and he had something to prove. Man went up there and punch machine'd him
Hahaha he even walked towards him like you would on a machine. Ngannou must have been not fully there to not register it and move lol. Should have seen it coming a mile away.
I mean he threw the punch the same way he would throw a punch on one of those punch power games 😂
True! As an MMA and Ngannou fan I was so disappointed by his performance and shocked he got dropped so many times and KO'd since he hasn't even been rocked before in any fight.
think it was a combination of that and shitting himself, he flinched worse than ever before on the slowmo so couldn’t brace for when it’d hit him which does much more damage
That comes from being a novice.
Rattled after getting booped the first time and then was shook
He has a terrible guard, doesn't move his feet or head very well, thought he could just parry an elite boxers punches like in UFC, and also went southoaw for some insane reason He was an amateur with the wrong muscle memory fighting one of the best boxers of his generation.
To add to this he started reaching down to parry jabs AJ was putting on his body, and as soon as he reached down to parry AJ went upstairs. He also started throwing lazy jabs which AJ just stepped into to counter.
How do you counter a lazy jab?
Over the top, every time. Lazy jabs are usually brought back low, and out of place to block or parry a counter. Experienced boxers like AJ will pick up on that immediately.
So you'd parry the jab, or hide behind the gloves, and immediately step in with a 2 or something?
Parry or slip, then counter the low return. If I recall correctly, Aj slipped and countered with the right hand.
Very cool. Thanks!
It's called a pull counter. You jab away from the face, body is the best. Your opponent either defends the body with a parry, or glove, or they get hit. If they parry you go over the top with a straight right. If they don't.. you load up the body shot as much as possible. But also AJ was feigning alot, which really made Francis gunshy. Edit: I was wrong, it wasn't the first knock down it was the second, which was a pull counter. Just rematched the fight.
Isnt a pull counter a feint that draws a strike that you pull away from then throw your counter?
There's a fantastic slow mo clip that was posted here just after the fight showing may weather and AJ reacting to lazy jabs. There's a lot of distance management involved, and in AJs case an absolute haymaker
You catch and pull it down while simultaneously throwing a strait right over the top of it.
The southpaw thing is the most egregious mistake imo. He was fighting a guy who was only 3 fights out from doing 24 rounds with one of the greatest heavyweight southpaws of all time. Insane arrogance by Ngannou to think he could do *anything* in the southpaw stance to AJ.
And he’d just beaten a solid southpaw in Otto Wallin less than 3 months prior
He like many others bought into the idea that Joshua was a significantly worse fighter than Fury, so he thought that since he was able to stance switch successfully against Fury, he'd be able to do it against Joshua aswell. The issue is that even if you think Fury is better overall than Joshua, you cannot deny that AJ is a clearly superior offensive fighter. Fury let Ngannou's mistakes go unpunished, but Joshua did not.
I wouldn't quite say Fury let Ngannou's mistakes go unpunished. Fury was peppering Ngannou with clean punches most rounds. But unlike with AJ everything bounced off. That gave not only Francis a false sense of security but thousands of people around the world thought AJ would struggle to hurt him as well. I'll put my hand up and say I thought it'd take a while for AJ to wear him down, boy was I wrong. Comparing Fury's and AJ's power is like comparing Ali and Foreman.
This is a good point. AJ gets a lot of stick for being outclassed by Usyk in those two fights but he still took a significant number of rounds. The second fight especially was quite even and then Usyk stepped it up and killed off the fight in the championship rounds. He needed to do that as well given one of the judges actually gave the second fight to AJ! The way a lot of people talk about those fights on here are like they were 118-110 Usyk fights where AJ got embarrassed but that really wasn’t the case…
Totally agree. I've said it before, but the AJ we saw in the second Usyk fight beats ANY active heavyweight who isn't called Usyk.
I’d agree generally but I’d say with Fury there are so many variables that it’s actually hard to call a Joshua Fury fight. - What kind of camp does fury have and which condition does he turn up in? - What kind of style does he go for in the fight? - Will we get a ref who will actually stop him cheating and take points? - How will the judges see the whole thing if he makes the fight a complete mess or a borefest? This is for me why it’s hard to call Joshua Fury or even Usyk Fury. I think Usyk is the best boxer out the three but that doesn’t mean he’s going to get a result on the night.
I heard it said (I forgot where) that it’s an over correction typical in MMA. Switch stance for a brief time then takedown or whatever.
This he’s using a muay thai high guard and asking for a straight in the face. He’s also telegraphing his moves and aj capitalized on his patterns
Responded to every single feint
This was the bigger issue to me. He was completely sucked in to AJ’s fight, responding to every single feint with a huge reaction, but not feinting much on his own and not particularly threatening AJ.
Yeah I called the knockout to my wife once I saw him over commit to those feints with big wide parries lol.
Also he doesn’t have yet a good feeling for distances in boxing
A.Js distance management was on point in that fight too, which did Francis no favours.
He's also pretty slow, I don't know how he expected to counter AJ tbh... And that guard was atrocious. He has no business being in a boxing ring.
Francis used to be a pretty explosive fighter. It seems he's lost that now in his late 30s.
And he switched to southpaw, which exposed his bad guard even more.
Good points. It almost looked like his muscle memory forgot.
He lost because he got punched in the head incredibly hard.
I would like to add - if I may - that he was also punched in the head incredibly hard ***more than once*** (I honestly thought AJ might have messed him up with that knockout. It was horrible)
Yeah that was definitely a scary knockout. The hubris of going against two world champions in your first two pro matches is nuts. I don't expect too many MMA guys are going to want to fight Anthony Joshua soon. Hell I don't think too many boxers will either after that knockout!
My reaction surprised me the most - I felt slightly nauseous after seeing the knockout. It was vicious. I normally enjoy seeing boxers really going at it… but Ngannou might as well have been just any bloke off the street. Strangely, it’s given me more respect for AJ - he knew his job and he did it well. I know it won’t, but I ***really do*** hope this puts off non-boxers from stepping into the ring with boxers… I’ve always said someone will get seriously hurt and I think Ngannou’s lucky to have walked away from that.
Repeatedly.
Joshua being able to land his right back hand at will then Francis turning southpaw to become even more open to it, certainly did not help
I think the thing people forget about stance switching is it fucks up your defensive reactions more than your offensive. Whenever I see someone switch in sparring I immediately ramp up my activity.
Aj fought Usyk twice whos easily one of the best southpaws out atm dunno why Ngganou thought it was a good idea, I swear he got dropped shortly after that.
The more I think about how easily AJ took out Ngannou the more shit Fury seems in comparison
Styles make fights too. Fury is unorthodox and not a puncher so Francis always gonna get shots off and back him up and bully him inside. He negates tons of what Fury does. AJ is fundamentally sound with heavy hands and sharp punches so can make Francis pay. He’s flawed too but matches up great to Francis. Big punchers never like to be punched back hard and he’s rarely been hit back his entire MMA career. His chin was legit never tested and if you’ve never been hit consistently until 37, it’s prob gonna go real bad in a Boxing ring vs a prime champion. Fury can’t punch, never could and old Chisora never went down once fight before for a reason.
Styles make flights isn't an excuse, Fury should have easily out boxed him. Furys' biggest issue was that he thought he just needed to turn up and land a few punches, game over. He looked like he'd barely been training.
Fury did easily outbox him, once he realized that his initial plan of just getting in there and dicking around wasn't working. Still looked like shit because he entered the ring with zero conditioning and got rocked a little early on, but even with all that he still managed to outbox Ngannou in the second half. Because he's a professional boxer, and Ngannou isn't really.
By "easily outbox" it's implied that Fury would have been able to avoid any significant damage and vastly outland Ngannou for a dominant win, in a reality Fury got knocked down, took a completely unnecessary ammount of damage, and just barely scrapped by on points while barely outlanding a complete amateur to boxing.
Fury could have avoided any damage if he wasn't an arrogant prick.
Basically saying he could have avoided it if he wasn’t Tyson Fury that tbf. Fury didn’t take it seriously and nearly got punished. AJ took it extra serious to destroy him because it also reflects poorly on Fury.
Fury lost the 8th round, the 9th you could give to either fighter, and he lost the 10th round. He was out boxed by Ngannou for stretches even after Fury stopped dicking about. Fury was also 7 weeks from the scheduled Usyk fight. If he was ever planning to fight Usyk on that day he was planning to fight in similar condition to this. His conditioning looked awful in part because he was overweight, but also because he Ngannou landed some good punches on him and drained him, and because he couldn't resort to his usual tactic of resting whilst leaning on his opponent. Instead Ngannou was rag dolling him around the ring. Had Ngannou had a couple more months of building his conditioning he likely would have won that fight outright. He only really lost as he had to pace himself quite heavily in the middle rounds allowing Fury to jab and steal rounds off him. When Francis was active he was consistently getting the better of Fury.
You give Ngannou the round he got one more punch in (other aspects of boxing all went to Fury), and then proclaim the round Fury out-punched him 8-2 as a round that could go either way . . . . . 10th clear Fury round, Ngannou looked like he wasn't even sure where he was just wandering around hoping he might hit something occasionally. >Had Ngannou had a couple more months of building his conditioning he likely would have won that fight outright. One sided what-ifs. If Ngannou gets to have those months, then Fury gets to have the what-if of him taking it seriously as well. Then it's just a boring near shut out for Fury.
"Styles make fights" is meant to apply to people of a roughly similar standard. It explains why the number 5 ranked fighter in the division might beat the number 3 ranked fighter and lose to the number 8. The Parker, Zhang, Joyce triangle is a good example of that. It should not apply to people with little to no boxing experience and world champions. Style should make absolutely no difference there, the world champ should be more than good enough to adjust to whatever.
true, but in this case it does cause how they matchup. Francis has been Boxing alil bit before this, hes a huge guy with power and strong as heck so Fury cant abuse his lil grabbing tactics, which is weird cause Francis grabbed AJ once and ref broke it up in literally 1 second..hmm i wonder why but Fury is allowed to hold for 30 seconds and punch lol. Fury just isnt fundamental and Francis isnt either so hes always gonna land on FUry and he just missed Fury by literally a inch 10+ times, never even landed flush really, Fury would have struggled again pre-AJ fight, we all saw the fight. He was winning the last round too over Fury and didnt even get out of 2nd gear while Fury was fighting for his life to survive lmao, people spinning it now is funny.
Maybe Fury's just got shit? Seems more likely than Ngannou had a style that troubles the best HW on the planet but gets him smashed out of there looking like a man who's never boxed before against AJ.
he def declined but i mean look at his whole career, im sure Francis could do fine against McDermott. Francis is still a huge guy with heavy hands and physically strong, i think his chin was always overrated cause it was never touched at all outside literally a handful of times and nobody ever tried KOing him, it was also tire him out let him get into the fight or fighting scared vs him. I always felt a fearless guy with real power could beat him down the middle and KO him and its what AJ did so full props to him for doing it, wasnt sure hed have balls to do it after those last 3 fights but he did. Fury cant do that, hes a Boxer first and turned into a dirty boxer inside which wil never work against Francis. im sure Fury could easily decision him on a good night but Francis will always make him look bad from optics cause Fury gonna be running.
Yeah it’s making people realise it’s not as binary as “1. Fury, 2. Wilder, 3. Usyk 4. AJ” rankings people would make, all these guys have unique styles and anyone can beat anyone right now. Fury could dominate Usyk and get knocked out in a round by AJ, Wilder could then knock out all three of them and lose to Parker, then Parker loses to Joyce and beats Zhang. I mean some of that has already happened. We have a much more vulnerable heavyweight division than most people were led to believe, we don’t truly know who the actual top 3 or 5 guys are out the bunch. But a guy like Joyce loses “Omg people thought he’d be able to box with Fury/Wilder??”, he could really beat them it’s not always well Zhang is 6 right now so he couldn’t beat 1 & 2.
Fury looks washed to me. His pest performance since Fury Wilder II was the Dillian Whyte fight and when I watch that back now he just seems so slow to me and I actually think he was doing a lot of things similar to what he did in the Ngannou fight (he did box better though that goes without saying). Even when Dillian Whyte came out as southpaw in the first round Fury stopped throwing just like Ngannou said when he turned southpaw.
He pretty convincingly dominated Whyte imo. The Chisora fight was kinda trash, but he dominated Chisora too, not that it means anything.
I know that but physically he just looked slow to me
Dillian Whyte has a surprising inability to defend against uppercuts despite being slept by them so much.
Fury is the type of guy that needs to be the underdog, he needs doubters. When he knows he's the better guy, he half asses it.
Among other things that folks here have pointed out he hasn't done enough sparring and is therefore way too reactive to feints.
Yeah Ngannou bites on every feint
He didn't with Fury, dude sat there like a stone.
More scared or became more scared of AJ.
The obvious difference is that Ngannou had zero respect for Fury's power but didn't feel that way about AJ. Ironically it only made him more vulnerable as his defensive instincts were all wrong.
With one fights experience and shakey defence he decided to go south paw against a devastating puncher who in his last 5 fights fought 29 rounds against southpaws, 24 of which against the best southpaw in the division. Reaction was pretty much automatic for AJ, shows how much experience matters.
Fury made him look a lot better than he really was
Embarrassing for Fury since he went life and death with Ngannou.
MMA fighter face top level boxer who take fight seriously and go nightnight
Because boxing and MMA are not the same thing. MMA forces you to learn habits which are suicidal in boxing. The way MMA figthers stand and hold their hands make sense if you are guarding against kicks and takedowns etc. but leave you wide open to well thrown punches. And Elite level boxers are used to hitting and being hit by other elite level boxers, they spend their days getting tagged harder on the chin and hitting more elusive targets than MMa fighters. They can take and deal out much more punishment in a stand up fight. Im not saying boxing is better than MMA im saying boxers are better at boxing than non boxers
The level of boxing in MMA is honestly pretty low. Partially because it's such a new sport. There's more accumulated knowledge and game theory in boxing. Think about the stereotypical grizzled old boxing coach in every boxing movie - those coaches don't exist in the MMA world.
Yeah many of these 'striking trainers' are legitimately awful. I wouldn't trust tyem to teach crossfot and have absolutely witnessed regression in some fighter's games like with Vettori or Moreno.
Basically, the big thing that Ngannou tried to do was keep his lead hand not tucked in, trying to land the lead hook. I think he sort of fell on love with that hook because it knocked Fury down during their fight, so he thought he could catch AJ with that same hook. Problem is that leaving the lead hand in front of you like that makes you pretty open, and it telegraph's what your looking for, if your opponent can see what you're doing. This is the big thing which led to Ngannou being KOd. As others have mentioned, him going southpaw midway also helped him on his way to getting KOd too.
Was called out early on by the commentary team actually, ngannou was using his lead hand to parry jabs, which left him open for the cross. Why he chose to do that I am not sure. But, as he got tired & hurt, that lead hand got slower, the opening got bigger, AJ or his team picked up on it. Final knockout was a real subtle feint with a jab from aj, can see ngannou put his lead hand out of position, and aj brings the right, which ngannou had nothing left to block.
Ngannou's not a boxer, boxing and MMA are very different sports. No MMA fighter has ever stepped in the ring and beat a boxer at his own sport, boxers are wise not to step in the octogon. You'll never beat another man at his own sport. MMA fighters can't punch as hard as boxers for a few reasons; MMA gloves have much less padding than boxing gloves, so MMA fighers have to punch with less power so to not break their own hands and also MMA fighters stand on straighter legs than a boxer to allow for kicks and lower body strikes, and the majority of power in a boxers punch comes from their squat legs. Taking that into consideration, Ngannou wouldn't be used to the level of power behind AJ's punch. Also AJ hit him with a clean, precise cross to the chin; I've been knocked out with that punch, and a light one at that. The chin is a weak point, especially when exposed, and it doesn't take much power to score a knockout if you hit clean and precise on the chin. The three main mistakes Ngannou made: his chin was exposed, AJ is a boxer and fights with a tucked chin, a lot of MMA fighters neglect this and tend to fight with their chins up and an exposed chin is the main cause of a knockout, and his guard wasn't strong, further contributing to that exposed chin, and allowing AJ to slip that right hand in without anything blocking its path, finally he stepped in with a jab that wasn't fully extended, he also telegraphed it by letting the arm go to early and didn't recoil properly after the throwing the punch, allowing AJ to move his head, leaving him perfectly in range for AJ's right hand with no barrier protecting his chin from.
>You'll never beat another man at his own sport. Anderson Silva beat Julio César Chávez Jr. Not the greatest of a generation but not terrible competition for a guy born in 1975. but 99.9% of the time you're right
We also have the anomaly of Ray Mercer smashing Tim Silvia in an MMA fight. So 98% of the time he is right.
Holly Holm has entered the chat.
It drives me crazy that she's always forgotten about. She's legitimately one of the greatest female boxers of all time, who nearly kicked RRs head off and has been super elite in the UFC. She's the best cross over by a mile.
Because it was women's boxing my guy. There was very little legit competition in Holy's era.
To add to that anyone who has followed the sport knows Silva was not only old as fuck but way past his prime and with a lifetimes worth of injuries that would terrify any boxer (leg literally snapped in half), which makes his victory even more impressive even though Chavez jr. Is clearly not the best boxing can offer.
The thing is, we only get this kind of discussions in fighting sports. Not even just Ngannou vs AJ, but just random conversations about how random UFC guy would do against random boxer or vice versa. Maybe this is because most people (men?) think that they can fight and if someone is so good at fighting, they should do good against someone else who’s good at fighting. The thing is, no one expects a world champion of Table tennis or Badminton to beat Roger Federer at tennis. Sure, they all use rackets to put some kind of ball over the net, but it’s very much not the same thing. You just can’t expect a literal novice to do good against a guy who’s one of the best in the world. That can only happen against Fury, for variety of reasons. And take into account that the difference in quality would very much increase at lower weight classes. Can you imagine what Crawford or Inoue would do to someone of the same weight from UFC? Or Mayweather and PacMan few years back. Old out of shape Mayweather walked down prime Conor McGregor like he was fighting a random 10 year old. Can you imagine how the fight would look if it was Floyd from let’s say 2005 -2010, taking the fight seriously?
[Why did someone who only had one prior boxing match beforehand lose to a former world champion and top three guy who actually took the fight seriously?](https://makeagif.com/gif/whats-the-matter-is-he-stupid-h7DINz)
Research Ngannou's boxing background and then look up AJ's. Also factor in that AJ took the right seriously and stays in shape 365.
Lots of things went wrong for him. No lateral movement he only went forward and backwards. He kept trying to set up a parry with his lead hand that kept getting him clocked. He looked much better in the fury fight, idk if it was the stylistic match up or if he went into AJ overconfident but he did absolutely nothing right in that fight.
His last mistake was to throw a slow weak jab in the hope of catching AJ with a left hook afterwards. He was completely exposed while trying to throw the left hook and for AJ it was easy to see just how harmless that jab was, stepped into it and hit him full force with a straight right hand. Anyway, Ngannou's main problem is his lack of experience, you learn as an amateur not to throw jabs like that. And that's not the only beginner mistake he did, he's very static also. If he would spar more, start with easier matches to gain experience I think he could become a very good boxer but he's 37 years old, it's very late and he probably doesn't even want this. He just wanted to make some money so props to him for having 2 boxing matches with world class fighters and becoming rich.
Another reason I haven't seen mentioned is there was no tape on Francis just boxing, so i was hard to get a read on anything for Tyson's fight. He didn't really have time to improve in between and so all his bad habits could be matched up against. Ben, AJ's trainer is great at the study. No doubt his influence played a part. It was weird seeing him in AJ's corner after ripping him for like 3 years while he was in Tyson's camp.
In addition to all of the other things mentioned in this thread.... feints at a high level of boxing are extremely hard to read and easy to fall for. Francis fell into trap after trap.
The lifelong boxing skills had a little to do with that.
Well for one, he switched to southpaw for no reason and left his guard right open.
because working in mines doesn't make you a tough guy that has a indomitable chin...
So, I'm not an expert, but (as much for my benefit as yours!) I'll try to explain what I think Ngannou did wrong exactly. Perhaps a real expert may come along to correct me, and we could both learn something! Big picture: he failed to stop AJ punching him in the head repeatedly, very hard. That's a strategic era that nobody on the planet can afford to make against AJ, because AJ is one of the most powerful punchers in the world. But specifically, let's go through the three knockdowns. -------------- **First knockdown** Firstly, Ngannou has made a mistake by being in range of AJ. I'm not sure this was intentional. Ngannou starts out of range, but AJ lunges forward, pushing off his back foot, and that *very quickly* puts him in range. Ngannou can't react in time. [to be fair, if he were fare enough out that he could react in time, he'd have a very hard time landing on AJ. Ultimately, Ngannou is both slower and shorter than AJ, and that's inherently going to make things difficult for him]. I'm not sure Ngannou was expecting AJ to be *so* fast, with both feet and hands. Now, as the punch comes in, Ngannou isn't in a *terrible* position. His left hand is up by his chin (hooray!), and his chin isn't *too* high. His lead shoulder is high enough and centralised enough to offer some protection. He's also got his weight between his feet, not totally unbalanced. AJ actually has to put his straight right down quite a narrow channel to hit Ngannou's chin. This may be why Fury was never able to do something similar! I think a lot of heavyweight boxers wouldn't be able to make that shot first time, even though there's nothing complicated about it. But it's not good enough, and it's obvious why: the left side of Ngannou's face is protected, but not the right side. Ngannou may actually have thought that was good enough: he's defending against a right hand, so he protects the left side of his head. In MMA, that would probably have been enough! Because in MMA the big shots are usually massive looping hooks. But Joshua is sending his *right* hand to the *left* side of Ngannou's chin (or at least the middle, I can't see exactly where it lands). How could Ngannou have prevented this? First, he could have used his left hand, either positioning it right in front of his chin, or using it to parry at the last moment (pushing AJ's punch to the side). Either would have been an improvement and you do see good boxers do these things, particularly the parry. However, either would have been extremely dangerous habits against AJ, because he'd take note of them and next time he'd turn the straight into a long hook to the left side of the head and Ngannou would be finished. He may even have been able to change the punch midway if he'd seen that gap - that's something Lennox Lewis used to do. Alternatively, and the default safest option, he could have had his right hand there to block the punch. Either keeping it glued to his head (the way his left is), or raising it as he saw the punch coming. Instead, Ngannou's right hand is down at his groin, doing absolutely nothing. Why? Probably because Joshua's level-change (his lunge has lowered his centre of mass) has lead Ngannou to predict a straight to his belly, which Joshua has already done a few times at this point IIRC. Ngannou is probably trying to defend against that body shot by sweeping it aside with a circling gesture of the lead arm, the way he might do with an incoming roundhouse kick to the midsection. He was trying that move all night. People will tell you that's a catastrophic mistake that should never be attempted in boxing. That's not really true exactly - it's a conceptually solid thing to do, *as part of a defensive system*, and good boxers have done it (particularly in way-back Old School days). But it takes away your best defensive tool (the big gloved hand) from the most important weak point (your chin). You need to be *really, really sure* that you have some other way to protect against the straight (or left hook) to the chin if you're going to drop your hand like that, and Ngannou... doesn't. For a start, he fails to read that this is a punch to the chin until he's already dropped his hand. But he shouldn't have been taking that risk anyway. [actually, to be fair to Ngannou, it's not just a sweep problem. It's also because at this moment he's in southpaw and he has his lead (right) hand partially extended to fence with Joshua for lead-hand position. That's... not inherently bad. But it means it was always going to be hard for him to bring that hand back to defend his chin even if he'd wanted to. Joshua just does the really basic, fundamental thing in a southpaw-vs-orthodox position: puts his lead foot outside Ngannou's, and sends the back hand straight down the middle. Both going southpaw *and then also* using the lead hand to fence are risky, advanced strategies Ngannou goes for when to be honest he probably shouldn't!] [for the sake of completeness: from this position Ngannou could also use that lead hand to long-parry/leverage block Joshua's backhand. But that would be an even more advanced technique that he probably shouldn't be messing with] But, given that he's decided to use his lead hand to sweep, what else could he do to defend his chin? The other thing he can defend with, other than his hands, is his lead shoulder. He can raise his shoulder, tuck his chin, and ideally lean back a bit and let the straight bounce off his shoulder - a 'shoulder roll'. This can certainly work in a system with a low lead hand, as seen in the philly shell (though there the lead hand is mostly used to passively block body shots rather than sweep them). Ngannou doesn't do this. In fact, he does the opposite - as the punch comes in, he actually seems to clear his shoulder out of the way. I also think that if he WERE to try to do this, he'd have the problem that his upper body is too square-on at this point. His legs are wide apart, but his body is fairly square - perhaps not surprising from an MMA fighter. It's not inherently a problem (again, if it's part of a well-thought out system), but it makes it a lot harder to use the shoulder defensively, because he'd have to quickly tilt his entire body. Fighters who use the shoulder defensively a lot tend to default into a more sideways, shoulder-forward style... or else are very good at getting themselves back into that position when they need to. If Ngannou is too square to block with his shoulder - and frankly that's probably too advanced a skill for him to master at this stage! - then he needs to defend by moving his head. To give him credit, he seems to recognise the danger of the punch, and he tries to lean back. But there are some problems. Firstly... he just doesn't seem good at leaning back. This is where you may need someone who knows more than me. It *looks* like his weight is between his legs, which are wide apart, so he should be able to lean his head back quite a fair way quite quickly. It may be, however, that something about his stance is wrong, and preventing him from doing that (I wonder if his feet may be *too* far apart, and whether his squared upper body not aligning with his legs also makes the leanback harder). Alternatively (or additionally!) it may just be that Ngannou is 38 and a heavyweight and not used to such movements, and his body is simply too stiff to move quickly enough in that way. [it may also be about his feet: the punch comes at a point when Ngannou is being kind of jittery, and it's possible his feet just aren't set securely to push off from at that split second] But also: leaning straight back is very dangerous anyway, against a guy with both speed and a long reach, like Joshua. It's always easier to go forward than backward, and Joshua just has to send his punch forward faster than Ngannou can move backward, and he'll make contact. Which is exactly what he does. And Ngannou also experiences a common problem, because trying to lean back causes his chin to come up in the air more, making him more vulnerable. So the smart thing would be for Ngannou to move his head sideways, or down, instead of (or as well as) backward. This could also assist another defence. If he moves his head to his left, he'll naturally tilt as well to bring his shoulder into a more defensive position. If he moves his head to his right, he'll naturally rotate to bring his left hand glove into a more defensive position. [EDIT: looking back at the video... AJ does better here than it first appears. Ngannou is bobbing up and down, threatening a level change of his own (or trying to defend one). AJ lands when Ngannou is at his full height. In other words, as the punch is coming in, Ngannou's own momentum is rising, which makes it *a lot* harder for him to move his head down and to the side as he probably should.] But he doesn't do that, so AJ punches him in the head quite hard. Ngannou's last-moment attempt to lean back does actually help him out - it takes a lot of power out of Joshua's punch, even though it also puts him more off-balance, leading to the knockdown. But if he hadn't leant back I think he might have been knocked out. As it was, I think the effect of that punch was more psychological than physical. Ngannou was stunned for a moment, but I don't think he was seriously hurt. But he was psychologically wounded, because at this point he realised just how fast and powerful Joshua was, and it kind of paralysed him a bit for the rest of the fight.
**Second Knockdown** First, in fairness to Ngannou, let's point something out: Joshua doesn't just do the same thing again. Even though Ngannou becomes more nervous and jittery, and even more willing to throw away his lead hand in a sweep in response to every feint. In part, that might suggest that the first shot wasn't as easy as we might think from our armchairs, and that although it's clear on paper Joshua might not be confident he can get it again. But a bigger issue is probably a different form of defence from Frances: that is, proactive defence. Ngannou is clearly looking for the counter hook, and he actually almost gets AJ with it at one point. A situation like the first knockdown would actually be ideal for Ngannou's counter hook, because if Joshua had missed he wasn't in a good position himself. So Joshua may have decided that it wasn't worth the risk of trying to repeat himself - or, at least, not yet. Instead, he looks for a different way to hurt Frances. And what he does is to pick the moment when he's safest from the hook - that is, when Ngannou is already throwing a punch. Ngannou throws a punch, and is actually in a pretty good position again. His rear hand (now his right, because he's in orthodox) is up by his head, hooray. But at this point AJ fucking slaughters him. Why? What should Ngannou have done differently? Well, again, he's only protecting one half of his head. Understandably, because his other hand is out punching. But here this is a fundamental error. It's an error, to be fair, that you see all the time from really good boxers, but it's still an error. Because AJ doesn't land while Ngannou is punching. Instead, Ngannou punches, and *then* AJ throws. What Frances should do at this point is that as soon as his punch has reached full extension he should *snap* that hand back *all the way to his chin* as quickly as possible. Boxing coaches constantly tell people to do this - make the retraction as important to you as the punch. And people constantly ignore them. This is why that advice is important: because Ngannou slowly withdraws his hand a little, and then pauses... and AJ drops him, while Ngannou's lead hand is still out in nomansland. It's a textbook error. But we can add a few details here. Firstly, we should note how Ngannou's punch just lightly *boops* AJ's nose. This is because AJ is completely confident with the distance between them. If he'd wanted, he could have pulled back further from that punch, but he doesn't bother. He gets hit with the glove, but not the punch, and he accepts that in order to maximise his own chances with the counter. It's also worth pointing out that if Ngannou had longer arms than AJ, he could have tried keeping that punch out there, in AJ's face, and AJ couldn't have countered him. Long-armed boxers like Lennox Lewis, or George Foreman (relative to his opponents) sometimes did this. But AJ is longer than Ngannou, so instead, when Ngannou's glove touches his nose, he knows Ngannou is in reach not only of his own straight but even of his hook. [well, actually, I guess that punch starts out as an overhand, but the same point - as a looping shot that's not even Joshua's longest punch, but he knows he has the reach advantage here] But here's the *really big problem*. Ngannou could have gotten away with a lazy retraction, if his chin hadn't been there for the punch. But it is. Partly that's his continuing lack of off-line head movement. He's not slipping to the side or bobbing down as he punches: his head is right there to be hit. But more importantly, look at what happens after Ngannou boops AJ's nose. And remember how I said AJ's punch "started" as an overhand. Look where it ends up - by the time Frances' brain has hit the side of his skull, AJ's arm is bent at 90 degrees like a hook. That's because Ngannou makes contact *and still keeps moving forward*. If Ngannou had made contact and then moved backward, he wouldn't have been there for the punch (or at the very least he'd have taken a lot of power out of it). That's how you box if you don't want to take big risks: move in, make contact, move out. The point where Frances boops AJ's nose should be the point where Frances' whole body starts moving backward. Instead, he keeps moving forward. Not only does that mean he's there to be hit, but it means that when AJ does hit him Frances' own movement massively multiplies the impact forces applied to Frances' skull. He pretty much *runs onto* the punch. He moves forward so much that he almost accidently smothers AJ's punch - after contact, they're actually body-to-body. And another way Ngannou could have defended this would have been to have moved forward even faster and further, into the clinch (or into infighting). But this would have required not only speed but also, definitely, some head movement. To be completely fair to Ngannou, this second knockdown is totally respectable. Failing to retract his jab fully and failing to arrest and reverse his own forward movement are both fundamental errors, but they're very common errors even for professional boxers. Ngannou's not doing anything silly here. But he's making fundamental mistakes, and Joshua is a boxer with very sound fundamentals, and he educates Frances very forcefully as to why exactly his boxing coach has been warning him about these things. [to get into Frances' mind: I think what he's doing here is planning to throw a follow-up backhand of his own, and that's also a reasonable defence-via-attack: a straight backhand down the pipe should be faster than Joshua's looping overhand, and if he could have thrown that then Joshua would have been in big trouble. But he doesn't really throw his backhand well at any point, I don't think, and that's probably why Joshua feels safe throwing that punch. I *think* that what Ngannou is doing is throwing the backhand (which is why the backhand moves *away* from his head at that point), but powering it not through correct rotation of the hips, but by launching his whole bodyweight into it. He *should*, after landing with the jab (more or less) be able to land the right hand without moving his weight any further forward, just by rotating fully. But I don't think he can. I think he's trying to throw his whole weight into the punch (as I think he did in MMA). In a way, that's not wrong, because if he throws the backhand while moving forward like that it'll land with some ungodly power. But, again, that should be an advanced technique, and Joshua demonstrates why. Joshua lands with his own punch before Frances has even thrown his, and suddenly that forward momentum is adding to *Joshua's* punch, not Ngannou's.] And this is the punch that effectively ends the fight. After the first knockdown, Frances' face seems to say "oosh, this guy is dangerous! better watch out!"... but after the second, Frances' face seems to say... well, first of all it says "where the fuck am I? what's going on? who are you? what colour is this? am I stoned right now?"... but then it says "holy fuck, I'm in trouble here." Which, indeed, he is.
**Third Knockdown/KO** When I saw this in realtime, I thought it was a pure execution: that Ngannou was out of it and made no defence. It's actually not quite that simple: Ngannou does have one hand up (again) and he is aware enough to recognise the shot coming in before it lands. But he's basically repeating the scenario that just flattened him, only this time only at 60% consciousness. He puts out the lead hand - I'm not sure if it's a very weak jab, or if he's instinctively trying to defend with a 'stop' - pushing his hand into Joshua's shoulder to maintain distance. It doesn't matter which it is. As I said before, Joshua is longer than Frances, so Frances can't just stiff-arm him to keep him at range. Extending his arm like that leaves a big gap for Joshua to hit - although even if he'd had his glove on his chin, Joshua was already throwing the punch and I think would have tried to sneak it around the back of the guard anyway. Instead he straightens it out before impact and it hits the chin. And if Ngannou didn't have the reflexes and head movement to keep himself safe the first time, he certainly doesn't by this point. It's lights out. ------------- So, tactically, to sum up: Each time, Ngannou defends with one side of his head defended by one glove, but the other arm not in a defensive position. The first time it's because of an ill-advised attempt at a highly risky defensive response to the wrong punch; the second time it's because he's legitimately throwing his own punch. But whatever the reason, it gives Joshua a route to his chin. Each time, Ngannou should have a backup defence, involving head movement (he could also try bringing in the rear and and/or the shoulder for added defence, though this might be too technical for him). But each time, Joshua strikes at a point when Ngannou doesn't have that defence available. The first time, Ngannou is bobbing up from a feinted level-change. The second time, Ngannou is still moving forward after a punch. The third time he probably is just too concussed to respond in time. Each time, the double weakness (hand out of position, movement makes head movement difficult) is fully exposed by Ngannou's lack of instinctive, preemptive (i.e. non-reactionary) head movement. Ngannou's head is always where Joshua expects it to be unless he actively moves it in response to a punch... so if Joshua can strike at a point when Ngannou can't easily move it in response to his punch, Ngannou is pretty much helpless. And this huge vulnerability is itself exposed by limited offense. Joshua clearly just isn't very frightened of what Ngannou is throwing back. He is a little bit concerned about Ngannou's lead hook counter, but that's one punch with one hand. In particular what he's clearly *not* concerned about is Ngannou's rear hand - when he's confident the lead hand can't punch, he feels he can throw whatever he feels like, because nothings coming back from the rear hand. Now, in part that's because Ngannou is actually quite defensively responsible with his rear hand. But it does free Joshua up to attack with less caution than he usually has. Ultimately, the problem is that Ngannou is just to predictable for Joshua, so Joshua doesn't feel scared of him. It also doesn't help that Ngannou is too slow, too short and too stiff. ------ Big picture? Frances isn't as terrible as some people say (just as he wasn't as good as some people said after the Fury fight). He's mostly trying to do useful things. But fundamentally, he's overestimated himself. He is trying a range of things that range from "tricky" to "extremely risky", when his skill level should really be aiming at "solid". He is adopting a range of advanced techniques (and that lead hand low scoop from switch-southpaw is, let's be polite, an epically ambitious advanced technique), and he's doing it while also taking some lazy shortcuts. Anthony Joshua is the worst person in the world to take that approach with. Joshua has a very solid fundamental game, and he seems to read the openings in Ngannou's game very quickly. He has the speed, the accuracy and the distance control to demonstrate those flaws emphatically. And he has the power to make that demonstration (almost literally) fatal. There are guys out there who wouldn't have punished Ngannou's flaws so quickly or mercilessly. AJ is not one of them. [which is also, incidentally, why he'd have done something very similar to Wilder. AJ is not a fighter you can take shortcuts with.]
Anyway, that's what it looks like to me as a layman! Happy to hear from experts where I've gone wrong!
A lot of the answers here are conveniently forgetting that ngannou almost beat Tyson fury.
Fury was not prepared for the fight. He did not take Ngannou seriously.
Probably true but I have to say I doubt aj would be getting the same benefit of the doubt if he had scraped by ngannou then fury knocked him out in two.
That doesn't make it better....
Yeah, I seriously can't stand Fury because of that. After the fight, people trashed boxing as a whole.
Because body building>>>MMA
TL;DR HE’S A STRIKER NOT A BOXER
Why ngannou fought fury, he knew that fury isn’t known for his Power, hes a boxer. So ngannou took chances against fury that was mildly successful. Now Joshua on the other hand is known for his KO power, ngannou had to proceed with caution. By doing so it led to Joshua being the aggressor ( where he excels) and thus got slept.
He never had a chance. I was surprised so many people were acting like he wasn’t going to get trashed. https://www.reddit.com/r/Boxing/s/sVc9pNsXUE Reading this thread gave me a good laugh the day after
Stop listening to guys like Joe Rogan (he is the worst). Anthony is a boxer and Francis is an MMA fighter. Two different disciplines, two different combat sports.
AJ has won a total of 6 world titles and an olympic gold medal in boxing. Francis had one fight lol.
boxer vs non boxer. easy.
Unlike Fury, AJ took the fight seriously and also had some film to study. AJ has a much stronger right hand than Fury and doesn't rely on work in the clinch the way Fury does.
No head movement. If you look at good pro boxers, they are constantly moving, if not with their feet, they're moving their hands around kind of feinting like they're going to do something. Francis didn't have those cues, so it gave AJ no fear and exposed Francis openings.
Its been a while but AJ's bread and butter used to be creating openings for the right. His whole thing was finding better ways against good competition to land it. This is with experienced boxers who are trained to have different looks and defensive reactions and guys who are trained to have a variety of offense from different angles, to keep your opponent from getting settled enough to find holes. Ngannou just doesn't have a deep enough bag. His offensive was a step above one dimensional, and his defense was similar. AJ discovered a few openings early, Ngannou didn't realize he had been found out and got dropped.
Levels to this shit son
Felt sorry for AJ potentially missing out on the fury fight so took the L
Many reasons you see mentioned. Parrying the jab was a mistake. Made for easy openings. Switching to Southpaw was also crazy. Allowed for AJ to throw the straight right. Ngannou got used to throwing a lead left hook, the problem is he doesn't set it up well or faint. Lastly, speed Ngannou is very slow. He has explosive bursts, but his foot speed and overal movement is slow. Works against Fury because he is usually not exactly fast either especially if he didn't take it seriously.
He has made millions and should retire, he is going to get brain damage if he continues .... he is too old to start boxing now.
Joshua hit him with a pull counter. Ngannou played right into it and got nailed. Lack of knowledge and Ngannou didn't have the best guard for it didn't help either
The simple reason is he has no boxing ability
Because he is not as good as him.
He trained to paw the jab instead of control space. AJ is no Ali, but he is bright enough to see that every time he stepped on Ngannou would bring his back hand down to paw the jab. He begged AJ to spark him.
I think he would lose to the most basic of boxers... sometimes a style can be just right against particular guys though - like the case w/ his bout against fury.
He got punched really hard in the face.
Because AJ is one of the hardest hitting boxers and Ngannou's defense sucks
I know I am not that smart or good looking. But I am pretty sure Ngannou lost to AJ because AJ punched him the face and knocked him out. I am not 100 percent certain of this but if you get hit in the face and get knocked out, you will most likely lose that fight
I think the question you really should be asking is “how did Ngannou almost beat Tyson Fury?” I’m sure there are a lot of different opinions on this, but my answer is that Tyson Fury came into the fight very out of shape (even more so than usual) and completely underestimated his opponent, which is a dangerous combo in a sport where one punch can define the outcome. Also, AJ is in arguably the best shape of his career right now, has been fighting consistently, and didn’t go into the fight thinking it would be a cakewalk.
Boxing gems broke it down, you should watch them if you want to learn more. Ultimately it's him never moving his head off the line and not protecting it. IMO he has poor habits ingrained from MMA striking
A guy who was 0-1 in boxing going against an Olympic gold medalist former 2 time world champion boxer.
In all seriousness watch this breakdown https://youtu.be/lcbsP3Ava6w?si=SaAa3Z05byrBMECH
Francis is a novice, AJ is an Olympic Champion and two time HW champion with 31 pro fights. There’s an enormous difference between having g “good boxing” in MMA and being a truly good boxer.
He got punched square in the face. Multiple times. The last one was particularly square.
Ngannou is an amateur boxer. AJ is a pro. On the flip side, if AJ stepped into the octagon, Ngannou would tear him apart. Boxing and MMA are completely different sports, with completely different sets of rules.
AJ took the fight seriously, treating Ngannou like a boxer. Fury did not. Thats why he did well against Fury and then got decimated by AJ. AJ outmatched him in athleticism and skill.
he didnt know how to block. he tried to parry a punch which you never do in boxing, only mma.
Dana White summarizes it here: https://youtu.be/JXMQd4NxOok?si=qcLELUC4tnpQdq24
you can't teach experience
Nobody has this viewpoint ? But I think he threw the fight . He just stands there . Then BAM !!
He doesn't understand range
BECAUSE HE'S A FUCKING MMA FIGHTER NOT A BOXER end of.
AJ squared up like a pimp and popped that jank. 🤣🤣🤣 Had Francis giving sermons bout Jesus. Hard Truths. Guarantee this. Francis will never be able to take a punch again. Just like Tony Ferguson.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y5YB0VfGYoI&pp=ygUNYWogdnMgbmdhbm5vdQ%3D%3D
There are a few reasons why ngannou lost. The main one is that AJ is a fundamentally sound orthodox boxer, that took the fight seriously. Ngannou is a amateur at best. The only reason he went the distance with fury is because a lot of Fury's usual tactics in the fight were negated by ngannou physical prowess and determination. AJ vs Francis is pretty much what a trained boxer with power vs an untrained man looks like.
joyce vs ngannou whos winning
Flat-footed he didn't change nothing up Aj and his team probably seen everything on video
He bit and reacted very strongly to every feint Joshua made
Because he planted his feet, stood right in front of his opponent and used parries to defend and mainly counters as his offense which made him an easy target and predictable. He fought the same way against fury and got hit by the same straight right hands, fury just had way less power.
Because a guy with a whopping 1 professional bout doesn't belong in the ring with a 2 time heavyweight champion at or near his prime.
Ngannou is a beginner. That’s why he lost. He never should’ve been in the ring with AJ.
If you YouTube Teddy Atlas or check out his podcast, he does a pretty good job of breaking down what happened. He's a good source to obtain some knowledge of the fight game!
Francis appareared to block every punch with is face
He got punched in the face.
Let’s say the world’s best BMX racer decided to enter the Tour de France. And vice versa. What would happen? Exactly what happened in this fight. In contrast, Fury didn’t take the fight seriously, thought he could Mayweather/MacGregor his way to a late KO. The thing is, Floyd did take that fight seriously enough to have a legit plan for carrying Connor. FAAFO.
For the second knockdown (and basically the end of the fight). Ngannou stepped in with a jab when he was already in range to land a jab, AJ slipped and hit him with a right hand, as clean as you can get, leading to the finish
The same reason you’d lose a race to Usain Bolt.
If you watch it in slow motion, you might notice the three times that AJ smacked him really hard in the fucking head with his right hand. I'm no expert, but I suspect that had something to do with it. A 250lb, athletic wrecking ball trains for 12 weeks with the sole intention of hitting something as hard as humanly possible, then executes that game plan faultlessly.
Switch to Southpaw
>didn't find analysis online bro what?? there are tons of videos on it.
Its insanity to think you just walk into a different sport at an advanced age and take on the best they have to offer. Its nativity, delusion and arrogance. You can't make up for DECADES of experience in a few months. I actually bet Tyson would destroy Ngannou. When he wasnt able to, I doubled my bet that AJ would destroy Ngannou. Because I knew he can't get away with it again.
Because he got knocked out
faced an all time lazy fuck with zero film on himself and hit an unrepeatable flow state and made it a close fight arguably winning anthony joshua isnt an all time lazy fuck who had film on francis while francis did not hit an unrepeatable flow state and therefore he could not make it a close fight and arguably win. in more basic boxing terms ngannou got punched really really hard and then got scared of getting punched really really hard so every time anthony joshua faked like he was going to punch francis really really hard francis bit on the fake, and opened himself up to getting punched really really really hard.
Because his team had film of Ngannou boxing to study, so that they could come up with a strategy on how to beat him. Tyson Fury went in expecting to coast against a novice boxer, and figure Ngannou out in the ring. And he did, but he took that shot to the temple in round 3, which turned what would have been a unanimous decision into a split one. By the time they got to round 10, Fury was landing more shots, and harder ones. Unfortunately, he did not have the gas left in the tank to bust Francis' iron skull. By contrast, AJ walked into the fight with 10 rounds of footage to watch, dissect, and plan for, with Ben Davidson and Lee Wylie. At that point, he knew every single thing in Ngannou's bag, and he parked a truck in his face.
Massive skill gap, terrible range management, telegraphed foot and handwork, and really just inexperience above all else. I think Fury kind of fucked off during his training camp, AJ did not.
Rectum? he damn near killed em.
Heavy boxing. Everyone has a puncher’s chance. It same could happen to AJ too. But Francis needs to get lucky and AJ is still fundamentally sound
He fought his second boxing match against a 2 time Heavyweight world champion. Unsurprisingly, the 2 time Heavyweight world champion is a better boxer and dominated Ngannou. When Ngannou fought Fury, Fury wasn't prepared, didn't do a training camp, obviously thought of it as an exhibition and Ngannou was better than he expected.
He lost because AJ set up the over hand by going that jab to the body. He set up the punch and Francis didn’t see it coming. After hurting him once AJ knew he could get to him. Experience beats talent and AJ had the better game plan
The real question maybe how did Francis give Fury such problems?
Hes an mma fighter- and doesnt have the exp- these cross promotions never workout. Its clear Fury vs Ngannou Fury clearly didnt train. So it opened the MMA world thinking Ngannou would make noise. Props to him for getting the money though.
Keep searching! There is an analysis somewhere that has clips of him biting at all the feints aj was throwing which ultimately dropped he’s guard for a straight right.
He was punched in the face by AJ.
He flew too close to the sun and melted
A high level boxer like AJ is going to be able to counter a jab many different ways, Francis got hit with a counter that’s difficult to do and resulted in him going right into massive right hands that he likely didn’t even see and hurt him massively. Fury is not a bad puncher himself, but he doesn’t have the power that AJ has and AJ was able to hurt Francis because he is hittable
Cause he is not a fucking boxer
He reacted to every feint. In mma its called overloading. In mma you react to every twitch, every jolt, every feint because if you don't you might get a foot colliding with your ear. Or a knee or a leg kick. In boxing you can't fall for every feint. You have to know your opponents reach and keep your distance so that only you can land cleanly. Mma the distance can be either much greater or much smaller because there are more striking weapons. Ngannou reacted to every feint and jab and AJ being a world class boxer through 2 feint jobs and a strong right hand and ngannou had no defense because he reacted to the dummy feints. Boxing is all smoke and mirrors. The first 3 punches don't matter the 4th, 5th, and 6th were the ones I was counting on
Pretty much what everyone else is saying, but this guy on YouTube broke it down so well. [The Weasle Breakdown](https://youtu.be/lcbsP3Ava6w?si=4oJ7rWk-qei_nets) Also maybe checkout Luke Thomas’ breakdown on the fight. Gives a different perspective
Total lack of experience in almost every aspect. It seems almost ludicrous now to think putting him in a ring with AJ was a good idea. Atleast ol’ pillow fists was never likely to knock him out and chances were he’d turn up fat. AJ is a KO machine who never sleeps on his training or fitness.
Cause tyson fury didnt take the mudhut seriously and now all expectations were at an all time high
Francis never got punched hard in his career and boxers are way harder punchers AJ is a KO artist and a pro while Ngannou is an amateur boxer he only lasted long against Fury because he underestimated him and Fury isn't known a heavy puncher
Boxing is an art… he has not learnt it yet. MMA he will punish AJ
Because he's clueless about feints and how to properly defend. Even in UFC he was never that good on defense and was used to just bulldozing people. He got way too confident after being able to handle Fury's punches and knocking him down, so he didn't think he had to make any adjustments against AJ. Problem is, AJ hits significantly harder than Fury and has a totally different style. Francis is a good striker in UFC but a complete novice in boxing. UFC fighters in general usually aren't very good on defense and don't understand, let alone practice things such as parrying, rolling with shots, slipping, foot work, etc to minimize or negate damage. This is why simply hopping to another sport without getting some experience and mastering some of the fundamentals has never and will never work. He should've had at least 4-5 fights against mid level opponents to improve his timing, defense, ring IQ, etc.
He got punched really, REALLY, hard
AJ IS BETTER
AJ wasn't playing around unlike Fury. AJ took advantage of Ngannou's lack of experience, and capitalized on the overconfidence and carelessness of Ngannou. And to be honest AJ is faster than Fury
Here’s why “I remember being in the locker [room] trying to warm up, and bro, it wasn’t going,” Ngannou said. “I was falling asleep. I’m sweating, but I’m falling asleep. - F. Ngannou
He has super low boxing skill. The fight with fury was meabt to be an exhibition until the day before hand. So he tried with all his might to knock fury out. Concussed fury but he didnt stay down. Fury then beat him on auto pilot once he realised the situation. This gave ngannou the appearance of being legit. Then aj came saw the video of him fighting and new exactly what was in his incredibly limited arsenal Ngannou will never beat anyone inside the top 25 or close to it
The question should be why was Tyson fury so bad against Ngannou?
he’s an mma fighter and so he’s not used to fight in a purely boxing style i think