MORNING KOMBAT WITH LUKE THOMAS AND BRIAN CAMPBELL - 🚨 Tyson Fury vs. Francis Ngannou Instant Reaction | Morning Kombat

Episode Date: October 29, 2023

Luke Thomas has you covered with an instant reaction to Tyson Fury vs. Francis Ngannou. What is next for Francis after shocking the world with his performance? How will this impact Fury's fight with Oleksandr Usyk? Luke Thomas breaks it all down. Morning Kombat is available for free on the Audacy app as well as Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts and wherever else you listen to podcasts.     For more Combat Sports coverage subscribe here: youtube.com/MorningKombat   Follow our hosts on Twitter: @BCampbellCBS, @lthomasnews, @MorningKombat    For Morning Kombat gear visit:morning kombat.store   Follow our hosts on Instagram: @BrianCampbell, @lukethomasnews, @MorningKombat Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Try it today and get up to $75 in PC Optimum Points. Visit superstore.ca to get started. Hi everyone, Luke Thomas, Morning Combat. We just did the watch along for the last two and a half hours. I'm not going to do another two and a half. I'm not going to break it down in the way that the Saudis did, which was just took forever to get things done. But let's react a little bit to what's going on here. So just wrapped up in the books, Fury and Ganu. Okay, I want to give you just our quickest results and then let's react to them as best we can.

Try and put it all together. Tyson Fury defeats Francis and Ganu via split decision. Your score is 95-94 Ngannou, 96-93 Fury, 95-94 Fury. Our own Brian Campbell had it a little bit wider. I was not scoring in real time. I don't have a great score for you, but I would say that anything on either side feels about right. Again, I just didn't go number by number on this one.

I don't see anything egregious here. I don't see 95-94 Nganou as egregious. I don't see 96-93 or 95-94 Fury as egregious either. Okay, but that is not the story of the fight. Ladies and gentlemen, here is the story of the fight. Let me just start off by saying this. Apologies to Francis Nganou. Apologies on behalf of Morning Combat.

Apologies on behalf of me. We all liked francis right we were not one of these people like what's he gonna do when he gets out with the ufc he's not got anywhere to go no no no we were real happy for him right so we're not we're not haters in that kind of way or just irrational skeptics about a very talented and perseverant man but we all thought that the buck was gonna stop here right we all thought that okay okay fine he's done amazingly well he's exceeded expectations even just getting to this point. But, you know, he's going to lock up with Tyson Fury, who is the best heavyweight boxer, at least could be the best heavyweight boxer alive,

we don't know. But, you know, the lineal champion, the WBC champion, the buck is going to stop here. And that is absolutely not what happened here tonight. What happened here tonight is one of the most inspiring things. I mean, I'm not saying I've ever seen, but certainly, I mean, this is a big deal, what he just did. He knocked down Tyson Fury in the third round, and Tyson Fury never, ever really got going. Whatever rounds he did score, and again, I don't think any scorecard for him is unreasonable. I really don't. I know that there's some hand-wringing on social media that everyone in MMA thinks that Francis was robbed again. I didn't score, but it does seem like, could I see a case where Fury could cobble together a few rounds? Yes, of course. Doesn't matter. Doesn't matter. Doesn't even matter. Would have been great for Francis,

but I mean, Jesus, doesn't even matter. He knocks Fury down in the third round legitimately. He showed much better defense than we ever thought possible. He bloodied a little bit, not terribly, but he bloodied the forehead of Tyson Fury. He caused a mouse under his left eye. Fury had a much worse visible damage after the fight. Neither was bad or anything, but clearly there was a difference,

and it was Fury who looked worse, and he absolutely disciplined Fury, both in the clinch and at range, where he had it. He just could not get anything really of significance. He had a couple of one-twos down the middle that did pretty well. A few times they landed. Here's the other part of the story. Not only did Francis show a great game plan of, again, kind of standing there but not really engaging. Making Fury on the outside kind of come to him. And at far distance where he had to double jab his way in every time. Or most times anyway. He showed, as I mentioned, much better defense.

And he has a ridiculous chin. That dude is hard to hurt, man. Really hard to hurt. And exceptional power. And Fury just didn't want anything to do with any of that. So he had to eke through those rounds such that he won them at all. Those were like,

those were like, I mean, by the skin of his teeth he was winning. Any of the rounds that he did win, he was winning them by the skin of his teeth. It was not, it was genuinely not in any way dominant. I don't have the CompuBox stats. Let me see if I can find those here very quickly in real time. I usually don't like to do that, but I'm going to see if I can do it here very quickly because I want to see what the numbers look like on this.

Here we go. They've got, oh, here we go. They've got the odds right here. Okay, total, total. And Mikey, I'm going to send this to you in, how do I send this to Mikey in the private chat? I don't know if there's a way to do that. Mikey, I'm going to email this to you. If there's any way you can get this thing on the screen, let me know. If not, it's no big deal, but I would like to show the people if there's any kind of way. Let me see here very quickly. I'm going to send this to Mikey now. There it is. Let me read this while I can. All right, so overall, Fury landed a total of, yeah, not that many punches total. He landed 44% of his punches in round one, 26% overall. Let's see. Overall, power punches landed. Fury, 71 punches to nganu's 59 total jabs 39 for fury

to nganu's uh excuse me 22 and then power punches 32 for fury 37 for francis yeah that sounds about right that sounds about uh let's see i'm'm going to paste that right there for you. There we go. I'm black-casting it in the private chat. Yeah, that's nuts. That's nuts. Now, they were all landing single digits in all the rounds, and there's really never a huge difference. Six to four, nine to ten, five to five, nine to six, right? Low output, not a huge difference.

That's going to make the rounds close, and whenever that happens, and by the way, in MMA too, the judges often end up hanging on one thing or another that may or may not accurately reflect exactly how the round went. But this is the story. This is the story of this fight. Francis Ngannou should be the face of mixed martial arts. He should.

He's the lineal heavyweight MMA champion who in his boxing debut forced the lineal boxing champion to scrape by the skin of his fucking teeth. The guy comes from the most hard luck story imaginable, the sand mines in Cameroon, across the desert, in jails, homeless, sleeping in the worst places ever, trying to find his way, makes a way in MMA, has to switch teams after a terrible loss, change countries, the whole nine yards, fight against the most dominant promoter who's currently being sued for antitrust concerns,

wins that battle, wins his freedom, gets this fight, then knocks down Tyson Fury. All these times MMA fighters go out there and just get their ass kicked, which you understand because they're signing up for an ass kicking that just comes with a big check. Francis was like, nah, I'm here to win. I'm here to not just participate, I'm here to win. I'm here to not just participate, I'm here to win. And really showed what a tremendous competitor he is, what a tremendous, frankly, fighter, you know, really, in the broader scoop of things.

There is, of course, you know, the Saudi blood money angle to it, which everyone wants to pretend is not part of the story. It is part of the story. But tonight, in terms of a triumphant moment for a man for an athlete dude Francis is the best that we have to offer Francis is the best that we have to offer dude he really is he really is that guy and this guy got shit on by other promoters once he left the UFC remember they were all Francis is really pricing himself out no he's pricing himself out of your fucking bracket that's what he was pricing himself out of what you can afford not what can be afforded to him and then it goes and puts on a

performance like this knocking Fury down in the third round, manifesting all of this in front of him, and then seizing the day against every negative thing that could have possibly, against an industry in part turning on him. Dude, nobody achieves what Francis Nganou achieves, which is why no one really tries. This is the exception that proves the rule,

but holy shit, what an exception. What an exception. I mean, you want to talk about a testament to the power of self-belief, a testament to the power of perseverance, a testament to the power of knowing your worth. My daughter's banging on the door. She's banging on the door. A testament to the power of, of, of in BC's words, never taking no for an answer.

A testament to the power of, frankly, mixed martial arts, you know, a little bit, right? A little bit, a little bit. The awkwardness of his style and what he could show as a guy trying his hand at not his native sport, all the skills he was able to pick up. Like someone finally like hey man MMA fighter can do some shit uh and so he didn't get the win with the judges in the end and the punch outputs are relatively low but you want to talk about overachieving in every possible way that you really could ever have expected of him he did that shit honestly after tonight I'm not sure if Francis is a bigger MMA star or a boxing star. He'll always be an MMA star because that's where he got his name from. That's where

he comes from and all this shit, you know, whatever. But is he going to fight Deontay Wilder next? Is he going to get a rematch with Fury? Is he going to fight Anthony Joshua? These questions seemed absurd six hours ago. Now look where we are. It's impossible. Francis, Francis and Ghanu is impossible. He does the impossible. He does things that are not supposed to be done and usually cannot be done. And when they try, they usually almost always fail, except when he does it, except when he does it except when he does it fucking a dude let me just say on behalf of everybody in mma and they've doubted him in all different kinds of ways i doubted him competitively i didn't doubt him in the other ways but i absolutely 100 doubted him competitively i am sorry sorry. I was wrong. I was wrong. And not only that,

Francis, I'll tell you what, I didn't think anybody could do what you did tonight. Not an MMA heavyweight alive. I didn't think any of them could do it, and you did. Wow. That was really special. Folks, you got to watch something. That was actually pretty special. Now, there were other special parts about it. The show was slow as hell. The production value was probably more expensive than you could ever imagine. BC and I talked about all of the guests.

Any boxer or MMA fighter that was a champion and that was ambulatory, they sent them. And whatever cost that was associated with that production, pay it. Felt like a halftime show and an Olympic Games all wrapped in one. And of course, we all know what the score is. This is all about making a deeply repressive authoritarian regime that does horrible shit to its people look really great. We can't in any way forget that that's part of what's happening here. That is also part of the story. Don't hide from the truth because you don't like it. Don't hide from the truth because it's a buzzkill. Don't hide from the truth because it ruins your day.

It's part of the story. But we will talk more about that on Monday's MK. We'll have plenty of time. I had a conversation with Kareem Zidane, an investigative journalist who's covered this. You can check it out at youtube.com slash morningcombat if you want to get into more of that. But tonight, the winner, in addition to being Saudi Arabia, by the way, and being the future of potentially the home of major combat sports events, I got to get going because my kid is having a meltdown.

Y'all can hear her. I got to get going. The winner tonight is Francis Ngannou.