Preparing for Tyson Fury involved preparing for several different styles. Preparing for Anthony Joshua is much simpler, according to Ngannou’s head coach.
Former UFC heavyweight champion Francis Ngannou has a big task ahead of him as he takes on top boxing heavyweight Anthony Joshua in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia on March 8th.
But relatively speaking, Ngannou’s team believes Joshua won’t be nearly as difficult to prepare for as Tyson Fury was last October. There’s obvious reasons for this: that was Ngannou’s first boxing bout ever, and they were extremely worried about “The Predator” running out of gas in the later rounds. That didn’t happen, so there’s an extra level of confidence there.
Then there’s the perceived style differences between Fury and Joshua. In a recent conversation with MMA Fighting, Ngannou’s head coach Eric Nicksick discussed how Joshua is a bit more straight-forward of a preparation in contrast to Fury, who had the ability to switch up endlessly in response to Ngannou’s attacks.
“Well, I’m not going to sit here and say that I think he’s more susceptible to get knocked out,” Nicksick said. “But I’ll say that he’s more susceptible to us finding him stylistically, whereas Tyson does such a good job of movement, and angles, and kind of just rolling off the punches and things like that. That’s why we tried to utilize a little bit more of the ring control and put him in a bar to limit some of his movement, whereas I feel like Anthony is going to be there more often.
“He’s more of a plot fighter, kind of works well behind his jab, but I feel like we can find him there in the pocket rather than having to chase him down or try to hunt him down,” he continued. “So there’s some differences there, but by that style of fight, if he’s going be there in the pocket, Francis will find you.”
While Nicksick claims there’s plenty of looks Ngannou will present in March that weren’t on display in October, there’s still the obvious ace in the hole that his fighter carries: his scary knockout ability.
“There’s the X-factor that our guy always is going to carry, and that’s that power,” Nicksick said. Once he hits you, once he’s able to kind of dictate his power on somebody and make them move and make them vulnerable, I think that’s when really you’re gonna start seeing the good things happen in that fight.”
There’s a lot riding on this fight. Ngannou has already made history with his performance in October, but a win against Joshua sets him up to take on the winner of February 17th’s Usyk vs. Fury showdown. That means a chance at the unified heavyweight title. People will talk about his near-win against Fury for years, but if he takes all the boxing heavyweight belts it will be one of the greatest achievements in sports ever.
If the same Ngannou that showed up against Fury shows up again versus Joshua, anything is possible.