No world title will be at stake when Anthony Joshua steps into the ring against Francis Ngannou in Riyadh on Friday night, but the British heavyweight will be fighting for something far more important — the dignity of boxing.
It’s a fight that shouldn’t be happening, given that Joshua, a former unified champion, has engaged in 30 professional fights while Ngannou, an MMA specialist, has had just one.
He dropped WBC champion Tyson Fury while losing on a split decision last year, a result that says more about the Englishman’s lack of focus than it does about Ngannou’s promise.
So here we are with another theoretical mismatch.
On the undercard South African Kevin Lerena, who has had 32 fights, faces unbeaten Australian Justis Huni, unbeaten in eight bouts. But at least there one can argue that Huni, a 2019 world championship bronze medallist, is an up-and-coming prospect testing himself for the first time in his paid career.
Gerrie Coetzee was a celebrated amateur when he made his 1974 pro debut against Chris Roos, a former South African heavyweight champion with 19 fights on his record. Coetzee won on points and knocked Roos out in a rematch the next year.
If Lerena can’t beat Huni, he needs to reconsider his decision to campaign at heavyweight.
But Ngannou shouldn’t be sharing the stage with Joshua (or Fury, for that matter).
Joshua, the 2012 Olympic superheavyweight champion, has presented vulnerabilities over the years but Ngannou shouldn’t be able to exploit them.
He lost his WBA, IBF and WBO belts to Andy Ruiz in 2019 before regaining them in a rematch. Then he was dethroned again in 2021 by slick Ukraine superstar Oleksandr Usyk.
I’ve been arguing for years that the dreadnoughts of today are not athletes like their predecessors, often ponderous, one-dimensional and even clumsy.
I’ve been arguing for years that the dreadnoughts of today are not athletes like their predecessors, often ponderous, one-dimensional and even clumsy
But even someone such as Ukrainian Wladimir Klitschko, having been exposed in his two-round demolition by Corrie Sanders in 2003, learnt to fight to his strengths, albeit illegally at times, like when leaning on smaller opponents.
Experience still counted for the cart horses.
Boxing is a trade where tenure counts. The sport is called the sweet science because skill cuts down brute power every time.
It takes years to master ring craft. Boxing is not a hobby that one decides to do one day, it’s not like scoring a lucky bet on a roulette table.
Sugar Ray Robinson, widely referred to as the greatest boxer pound-for-pound because he possessed all the required attributes of a pugilist — such as a knockout punch, a solid chin, the heart of a lion and the ability to box cutely or slug it out when required — engaged in more than 100 fights before winning the world welterweight crown.
He took the world middleweight belt from Jake LaMotta soon afterwards.
His apprenticeship was far longer than it should have been and would have been in this day and age, but it drives home the point that boxing is a sport where competitors grow by spending time inside the ropes.
Pete Rademacher won the Olympic heavyweight gold at Melbourne 1956 and made his professional debut on the biggest stage in the world, challenging Floyd Patterson for the world heavyweight title in 1957. He had the satisfaction of dropping Patterson, the 1952 Olympic middleweight gold medallist, in the second round, but he visited the canvas six times himself en route to getting knocked out in the sixth round.
Rademacher lost his second paid bout, also by stoppage, against Zora Folley, then a prospect with 44 bouts to his name, who went on to fight some of the top heavyweights of the era, including Ali, Sonny Liston, Henry Cooper, Ernie Terrell, George Chuvalo and Oscar Bonavena.
Rademacher stuck it out for a while, notching up a points win over Chuvalo, but losing to light-heavyweight supremo Archie Moore and world title contenders Brian London and Karl Mildenberger. He eventually retired in 1962 with a record of 15 wins, seven losses and a draw.
Even the king of amateur boxing failed to walk into the paid ranks.
There have been cross-over fights for a while, like when Ali took on Japanese wrestler Antonio Inoki in a mixed rules exhibition in 1976. It turned out to be a spectacular waste of time, with Inoki lying on the ground kicking at Ali’s shins for 15 rounds. The bout ended in a draw.
The fact is a wrestler trying to box a boxer will lose, and a boxer trying to wrestle a wrestler will lose. That’s natural. It would be like getting a rugby player to challenge a chess grandmaster.
Admittedly, it didn’t stop Conor McGregor switching from the cage to try his luck against Floyd Mayweather a few years ago — and it didn’t end well for him.
And then Fury dropped the ball against Ngannou.
So now it falls to Joshua to win convincingly — because if he doesn’t, it won’t mean MMA fighters are suddenly skilled ring technicians; it’ll mean the current crop of top heavyweight boxers are closer to the class of bums.
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