Roll up, roll up, roll up. Welcome to the greatest show on earth. Barnum and Bailey presents Tyson Fury versus Francis Ngannou, the heavyweight champion of the world, the greatest fighter of all time, against the hardest puncher that ever lived.
Two tickets, sir? Just the two? Are you sure, for a show such as this, the like of which none has seen?
Circus Saudi has missed a trick here. It should have had Fury standing outside a big top dressed in leopard print inviting all-comers to take him on.
Out of the crowd emerges a tall stranger. “You sir, are you willing to fight me?” “I am,” says Ngannou, who steps forward through the crowd, his impressive musculature drawing gasps from awed observers.
Among the many absurdities in this most absurd of spectacles is the claim that this heavyweight “contest” opens something called the “Riyadh Season”, as if the kingdom were rolling out a sporting staple stretching back to Roman times. The boast is, at least, in keeping with a bill-topper devoid of authenticity.
What has boxing become? Has it no shame? With each faux showdown boxing takes an incremental chunk out of its credibility. Ngannou, as compelling a character as he is, as fearsome a puncher as he is in a mixed martial arts setting, would be barely any use to Fury as a sparring partner under Queensberry rules. It is not that he can’t box. Just that he has never boxed in a meaningful way.
What does it say about the regard boxing has for itself that it would present this as a significant match? There is no equivalence between Ngannou’s heavyweight crown in UFC and Fury’s WBC world title. Ngannou is a bona fide fighting man, as his 17 wins in 20 bouts and UFC knockout reel show, but he is not a bona fide boxer. Indeed, he does not qualify as a novice.
The promotion is predicated on the idea that Ngannou’s insane power has the capacity to rearrange Fury’s senses, the puncher’s chance as it is known in the trade. To bolster the idea that he is a credible opponent either Ngannou, or the promotion, recruited his childhood hero Mike Tyson to his corner, as if the association with the “Baddest Man on the Planet” were sufficient to subvert convention.
In the build-up to the fight, Ngannou said little from his training base in Las Vegas. Interview requests from journalists seeking to probe his credentials were met with co-ordinated dissembling. Ngannou’s story would, of course, come to light in glossy video promos planned for release in fight week to boost pay-per-view sales. Fair enough, it is some tale after all.
Born into heavy-duty, third-world poverty, Ngannou was raised in a ramshackle structure with dirt floors. He was shovelling sand into the back of lorries to augment the family income by the age of 10.
When he left Cameroon with the vague idea of pursuing a career as a boxer in Europe, he did so without certification. This required a hazardous journey through Niger and across the Sahara to Algeria and then on to Morocco, all with the aid of professional people smugglers.
He crossed the Mediterranean illegally by small boat to Spain, whereupon he was immediately detained by the authorities, until finally being granted asylum and making his way to Paris.
That journey is a Netflix series all its own. Series two might begin in the Paris underground car park, where he slept rough whilst identifying a gym that would take him on, not as a boxer as he had hoped but a hybrid fighter in mixed martial arts. All of this took immense courage, a marginal existence lived on the ragged edge.
Fury’s route to Riyadh was also unconventional if not quite in extremis. He is an extraordinary fighter and a complex figure of some fascination when he sets the bombast aside and abandons the boorish, crude stuff.
Fight week brings out the cartoon version of himself, named the Gypsy King. He tells us he is the greatest of all time, that he would have whacked any heavyweight in history. Regrettably his record does not support this.
Beyond the trilogy with Deontay Wilder, and Wladimir Klitschko eight years ago, mightily impressive though those accomplishments were, they amount to just two opponents. Beyond them there are none in that class. And here he is in a glorified exhibition taking place in a ring separated from the rest of the bill.
This is a naked cash grab, which is understandable in the case of Ngannou, who will bank many multiples of his biggest purse in UFC, thought to be approximately $500k (£413k). And, perhaps, for Fury, too, if banking easy money is a win. None of this would matter so much were there an absence of legitimate opponents.
The loser is a sport which permits an unbeaten heavyweight champion of the world, Fury, to engage this way when there is a fight to be made with Anthony Joshua, not to mention a unification bout with Joshua’s conqueror, triple-belt holder Oleksandr Usyk.
These are the kind of fights that would draw a sustainable audience and re-inflate a sport desperately in need of substance. We understand a date with Usyk has finally been set for December in Riyadh. Hooray, says Fury, two big pay days before Christmas. Yes, but only one fight.
