Comments Thread For: Demetrious Johnson Wants Ngannou To Continue in Boxing, Sees Nothing Left For Him in MMA

[Rockin']

Tyson Fury lost.

Then why does Box Rec have a big fat W next to Furys name for the bout?..............Rockin'

[TMLT87]

this was hardly a Mercer vs. Silvia type of wake-up call.

This was vastly worse than Mercer vs Sylvia.

Yes, a boxer can occasionally land something big early in an MMA fight and win, even at the highest levels, thats just the nature of punchers chance, especially in a volatile MMA environment with small gloves, no counts and with boxers being the best punchers. What you're not gonna see is a boxer make his MMA debut against Jon Jones, be competitive all the way until the decision, win rounds and have people claim he was robbed on the scorecards and should have become the UFC champ in his first fight. One is punchers chance that someone would struggle to recreate consistently, the other is actually having the skills to hang right off the bat.

Not to mention Mercer/Sylvia took place in some random little promotion in front of like 100 people in Alabama or something, nobody gave a ****. Whereas Fury/Ngannou was one of the biggest boxing matches of the year, millions of people saw that.

Boxing has gained another global blockbuster and a highly public soapbox to reiterate it's claim to being where the best natural fighter talent is drawn to.

I dont think the average Joes take away from a nearly 40 year old MMA guy coming over and doing that is "well boxing is where the best natural talent goes". I think its more adding to MMAs credibility if anything.

You're right that boxing has gained a star, but its very short term and nobody is ever going to view Ngannou as a boxer, same with the Youtubers etc. What it comes across like more than anything is boxing resorting to bringing in outside names/fanbases to try and stay main****** relevant, at the cost of the sports legitimacy. We are at a stage where at least half the time someone who doesnt follow boxing hears about it now is through fights that dont even involve boxers. I dont think thats really a positive for the actual sport of boxing and its image.

The UFC in comparison, basically ignores all this **** and focuses on consistency, which is what wins out in the end. Because its built more like a sports league the UFC brand itself is a draw to some degree and they have a baseline audience that will follow it regardless. And whatever happens they're going to be doing at least a semi-big PPV card every single month, not a Youtuber or boxer in sight. They're also pretty quick and effective when it comes to building up new stars and new things for people to care about. So they can shrug most of this **** off pretty easily.

Case in point - Ngannou hasnt even been gone two years yet and in that time they've had Jones come up and destroy his last opponent in under 2 mins, they've elevated two young skilled new HWs in Aspinall and Pavlovich (the latter basically serving as an Ngannou replacement) and are now putting them against each other, with a third ie Jailton on the cusp of being at that level. People were already torn about who would win between Ngannou and Jones, and now plenty see those new guys as credible threats to either. Plus Gane already had a very close fight with Ngannou the first time, getting the better of him on the feet, and forcing Ngannou (who is not a good wrestler himself) to exploit Ganes even worse grappling deficiencies to win. Now Gane, who is several years younger, is working on his wrestling a ton so its not hard to see the narrative shifting to "Gane would have won the rematch" in a few years.

We ought to accept by now that all sport fighters are cut from the same cloth and can pivot between rules by dialing in their training

Plenty of boxers could successfully transition to MMA, probably a higher ratio than MMA fighters would find success in boxing. BUT, theres a crucial difference, in order to be consistently successful in MMA the boxer has to learn completely new things that make him no longer a "boxer" but an MMA fighter with a boxing base. Whereas Ngannou was just using what he already had in his skillset and has demonstrated for years.