Now I know it's really bad but I feel like if it was someone like AJ who had that performance vs Ngannou it would be viewed as a lot worse With Fury he can always have the boxing public claim that he didn't take the fight seriously enough (he clearly didn't, he looked to be in terrible fighting condition) and that he's not a serious guy unless it's a big fight With Joshua thered be no way out Also had Fury beaten Usyk both times or even at least 1 of the times the Nagnnou performance would've been more forgiven Will the Ngannou fight hurt Furys legacy and perception longterm... Especially if Fury loses to AJ ? What do you guys think
The fact that Ngannou was an mma fighter compounded with Fury having every single physical advantage and being seen as one of the best heavyweighs ever by the casuals, yes, this zhit will be continuously brought up whether boxing fans like it or not
It's really bad.. MMA fans would've been so insufferable if not for the Joshua KO over Ngannou shortly afterwards
Terrible for his legacy. Arguably losing to an MMA guy who is/was a boxing novice is an embarrassment to himself and the sport. Like him or not AJ redeemed the sport with his Ngannou destruction but Fury goes on and loses his next two fights clearly to a guy he had every physical advantage over. Fury needs a name win on his resume if he fights again or he goes out on a real low.
Joshua should be forever thanked for the sole fact that MMA fans would be insufferable about the Fury fiasco.
It's bad. It doesn't negate what he did accomplish, but it knocks him down some spots. Similar to Patterson being knocked down by Rademacher in his pro debut.
Ruins his legacy and this makes Usyk's win over him null and void. Terrible fighters. Even worse is a bodybuilding bum KO'd Francis with ease next time out. So basically everyone's a bum.
Set the sport back years, Fury takes a break from the sport to get blitzed, and then goes life and death with a cagefighter who has never had a professional boxing fight, getting heavily dropped in the process. If Joshua didn't obliterate Ngannou it could've set off a chain reaction that the sport would've taken years to recover from.
It's bad. Not just because he came close to losing against a 0-0 novice, that can be explained/excused by the horrible shape he turned up in... But because it shows how poor his level was when he went full fat sloppy slob in the ring... And that devalues Wilder bigtime, since Fury in that kind of terrible shape and terrible sloppy attitude still beat Wilder comfortably in their third bout. No serious fighter in good shape loses against anyone in that kind of shape, Wilder lost clearly when in good shape himself, ergo Wilder was not a serious contender. And that's doubly bad for Fury because he hangs most (if not all) of his comeback reputation on that trilogy - the Ngannou fight devalues the whole thing.
True, but tbf, wtf was the boxing world doing in the first place letting a guy from another sport fight a literal active boxing champion in his debut. Its ridiculous.
Given how he performed vs. ATG Usyk (which was very well, despite losing), the Ngannou defeat can be chalked off as Fury 'doing a Fury' and being lazy/complacent against someone he really should've trounced - he had loads of dodgy performances against B-level fighters like Wallin, Cunningham, even journeymen like Pajkic and that McDonalds fella. It was a sideshow, and people will remember Fury for his epic Wilder trilogy, monumental (though dull) win against Wlad, and epic first fight against Usyk. Ngannou remains a bit of a boxing enigma, and it'd have been interesting him to fight the likes of Chisora, Whyte, Miller, Ruiz to see what his level really was.
It's a stain on his resume like other fights he was an idiot in. His career is loaded with terrible decision making, including the utter idiot from Kronk he hired to give him CTE. This performance was largely the work of 'Sugar', though people like protecting him. This guy literally said in an interview Fury was going to land a RH early and go home. Now imagine the utter garbage he is telling his fighter in camp. He had zero clue about the danger of this fight, and it was right before the biggest fight of Fury's career. Honestly, if it was any other top fighter, 'Sugar' would have been fired after that fiasco. Just imagine if it had been AJ. Sugar is back in Detroit, the Paris of America, and never invited to another camp. How joshie performed later looks bad for Fury but is of course artificial because they already learned the lesson via Fury. Joshie actually could have gotten reckless like Fury and got caught if he fought first. But Hearn is not dumb enough to put his fighter in like that against a puncher before a Usyk unification. It's hard to believe how stupid Fury's entire team is, when you're talking about a fighter of that status and the money at stake, but truly, he has the stupidest team ever put together for a boxer in the history of the sport. Of course nobody will look at the details and Fury will have to live with getting dropped and some say beat by a 37 year old MMA meathead.