Coach Dewey Cooper believes Francis Ngannou has the opportunity to become the baddest man on the planet.
The means to that end starts with a victory over Anthony Joshua this Fri. night in Riyadh and finishes with a title-winning performance against Tyson Fury (or Oleksandr Usyk) later this year. That would make “The Predator” the only fighter in history to be crowned UFC heavyweight champion and WBC heavyweight champion.
Retired UFC fighter Chael Sonnen has a much different opinion.
“This is what coach Dewey Cooper was speaking about,” Sonnen said on YouTube. “He said Francis will beat Fury in the rematch. He will be the undisputed boxing champion, which will make him the baddest man on earth. The only undisputed heavyweight boxing champion who was also the undisputed UFC champion. That would make him — and nobody could argue — the baddest man on earth. That’s a very logical statement by Dewey Cooper. That’s very hard to argue against. But then you’re gonna get a wrestler like me that says, ‘I don’t know how long the boxing champion has been the baddest dude on earth.’ I would look to the Olympic heavyweight wrestling champion.”
“I don’t know how many of those fights that Francis has had and has looked great in that I personally don’t believe the guy announcing the fight could have stepped in and won,” Sonnen continued. “I don’t know if there was a time that Francis was in the UFC that I personally believe that Daniel Cormier could not have taken his suit off and got in there and handled his business. And one thing that I felt like we had very clearly established, starting all the way back in 1993, was that grappling was superior to striking. So if we’re gonna conclude that somebody is so great because they became great at the striking, I am gonna wonder, how did they do in Abu Dhabi? How did that person do when they took on Gordon Ryan? How did that person do when they took on Gable Steveson? I’m going to wonder those things. I’m not ready to just concede.”
Even Ngannou admits Cormier “would have finished him.”
“I am always going to question — always — how when you were under contract [with UFC] and had the opportunity to fight Jon Jones, you did not. Like, that isn’t gonna go away. And believe me, it’s worked plenty of times when guys priced themselves out. They were able to maintain prestige. It was never a knock on them, it was a very clever way out.”
Just ask this former UFC champ.
Jones and Ngannou were in talks to fight back in early 2020 but the promotion could not match the salary demands from either fighter. In fact, the impasse sent “Bones” to the sidelines for more than three years and “The Predator” eventually left UFC to try his luck in the “sweet science.”
Now it appears the fan-friendly super fight will “probably never happen.”