Francis Ngannou is the Heavyweight Champion of the World
The greatest story in the history of heavyweight boxing.
What was supposed to be a routine beatdown, an easy hundred-million-dollar Saudi Arabian cash grab for the undisputed, undefeated heavyweight champion of the world Tyson Fury turned out to be the greatest underdog story and sporting spectacle we’ve seen in the last fifty years.
Francis Ngannou was born in fire, raised by the cruel and unforgiving sand mines of Cameroon. He has lived a life that tells the greatest story on Earth. Behind the chiseled, mountainous frame is a man who dreamed of nothing more than a notebook as a child, a man who spent months in a Spanish jail cell for daring to try for a better life, a man who failed again and again until he finally made it to Paris and slept outside in the freezing cold just to maybe get his chance one day.
He is a man who went pro at twenty-seven in his second sport and became a champion when he brutally took down Stipe Miocic in UFC 260, only to give his belt away for the betterment of those beneath him, change sports again, and dominate the greatest heavyweight boxer of our generation.
It only took one night for the novel that is heavyweight boxing to be completely rewritten. The self-proclaimed Gypsy King, the world’s greatest heavyweight “fighting man” and former voice of the working class, was thoroughly beaten up by a quiet, respectful, and impossibly determined Predator, Francis Ngannou, who broke him through ten rounds.
He is, in all respects, the world’s greatest fighting man alive. The throne of the people is his and his alone.
What we witnessed in Riyadh is a masterful retelling of man’s greatest story. It was one of the few moments in sports where the sheer gravitas of the story surpassed the sporting event itself and rendered the actual result meaningless. Tyson Fury won the fight on the judges’s scorecards, but Francis won the night. He became the people’s champion. In all the ways that matter, he became the heavyweight champion of the world.
The difference in the two men was determination, not skill, and it was through that unbreakable will that the Gypsy King was dethroned. By the time he was ten years old, Francis Ngannou had gone through more hardships than Fury had in his entire life, and it showed throughout the fight. Yet somehow, the money and fame and glory have never once gotten to his head.
While Fury was busy cherry-picking fights and disrespecting the fans and country that made him who he is with his headline-hunting father, Francis was working on creating a plan to take down the Gypsy King. And when this plan worked, and he sent Fury’s crown flying into the canvas in the third round he became a symbol of hope worldwide.
Even from the harshest of sand mines a diamond can emerge. The world has once again been proven malleable. Circumstances, while predictors of outcome, are not absolute. A small boy from Cameroon who just wants a notebook can grow up and dethrone heavyweight boxing’s golden boy.
Take a walk through the streets of London, Paris, New York, or anywhere else and the people will tell you. Francis Ngannou is our champion. His win in Saudi Arabia was a win for the worldwide struggling underclass.
He proved, once more that sports are nothing but stories, live-action literature. LeBron coming back to Cleveland and winning his hometown team a championship is worth five in Miami. This doesn’t make sense, yet it’s undoubtedly true. Francis “losing” to Tyson Fury is just the same.
It shows us that story is so much more important than the technicalities of life. Narrative is all that matters. How something makes us feel supersedes anything a judge or self-appointed authoritative figure can say.
Tyson Fury won and remains the heavyweight champion of the world, but where does he go from here? Nobody wants to watch or support a man who disrespects the sport and his fans’ wallets by not taking the fight seriously until his back is smashed against the canvas and he sees his career flashing before his eyes. Of course, this doesn’t mean that his career is over or that resurrection is impossible — he’s done it before in glorious fashion against Deontay Wilder — but it won’t be easy.
Two years ago, Fury was the King of the voiceless. Today, he is nothing but an impressive, albeit hallow, undefeated record. Everything he built was thrown out the window when he sold his reputation and soul to the highest bidder, and repeatedly belittled those with differing opinions and valid criticisms of the direction his career has gone since Wilder.
Francis Ngannou’s right hand was the voice of us all.
