Dana White wasn’t surprised to see Anthony Joshua lay waste to Francis Ngannou, which is part of the reason why he never wants to see MMA fighters crossing over to boxing.
Just one day before UFC 299 in Miami, Ngannou suffered a brutal knockout loss in his fight with Joshua. The ex-UFC champ suffering two knockdowns before a final right hand put him away for good.
The fight ended in dramatically different fashion than Ngannou’s first boxing match, where he knocked down lineal heavyweight champion Tyson Fury and ultimately took him to a razor-close decision.
This time around, Ngannou looked overmatched as Joshua dropped him in the first round and then did the same again in the second round. After Ngannou got back to his feet from second knockdown, Joshua rushed forward with a devastating overhand right that put the former UFC heavyweight champion to sleep before he ever hit the canvas.
“I saw it on social media,” White said about the knockout. “Going into the Fury fight, if Fury trained for the fight and didn’t show up and look like he ate Tyson Fury, that’s probably the way that fight would have ended, too.”
This ringside angle of @anthonyjoshua's finish is SAVAGE ☠️#JoshuaNgannou | #KnockoutChaos | #RiyadhSeason pic.twitter.com/YJYV8hPmmD
— DAZN Boxing (@DAZNBoxing) March 9, 2024
It was Ngannou’s performance against Fury that helped him land the bout with Joshua, but the fights played out in completely different fashion.
When he was still in the UFC, Ngannou talked often of a matchup with Fury, and that played at least some part in his decision to leave the promotion. It worked out in the end with him nearly beating Fury but the same couldn’t be said for his performance against Joshua.
White said watching Ngannou get flattened with one of the most devastating knockouts in recent history serves as proof why he never liked these crossover fights in the first place.
“You know how I feel about crossovers into boxing,” White said. “That’s how they end. Just like that.”
Despite how White feels about it, Ngannou made it clear that he intends to return to boxing again, though it remains to be seen if that will be his next fight – or if he’ll finally make his debut with the PFL after inking a lucrative contract with the upstart promotion in the wake of his defection from the UFC.
