By: Frank Hyden, MMATorch Senior Columnist
There were no MMA events this week so I’ll cover various combat sports
stories like Jon Jones getting injured and the Ngannou-Fury boxing
match.
UFC Heavyweight Champion Jon Jones (27-1, 1 No Contest) suffered a
torn pectoral muscle and will miss several months. That means his
title fight against Stipe Miocic (20-4) at UFC 295 on November 11th is
off. This obviously sucks but the replacement is very exciting.
Now, the co-main event will be a fight to crown an Interim UFC
Heavyweight Champion between Sergei Pavlovich (18-1) and Tom Aspinall
(13-3). That will join the still scheduled and now main event fight
for the vacant UFC Light Heavyweight Championship between Jiri
Prochazka (29-3-1) and Alex Pereira (8-2).
Prochazka was stripped of the UFC Light Heavyweight Championship he
won at UFC 275 because of injury so I’m a little surprised that Jon
Jones hasn’t been stripped of his title and they’re going with an
interim belt. A torn pec is going to take a while to recover from (8+
months) so Jones isn’t going to fight again until late 2024 at the
earliest.
It’s not a huge deal, this is all quibbling over semantics anyway, but
I like consistency.
*************
Former UFC Heavyweight Champion Francis Ngannou (17-3 in MMA, 0-1 in
Boxing) lost a very close Split Decision to WBC Heavyweight Champion
Tyson Fury (34-0-1) last weekend. It was very clear that Ngannou took
everything very seriously and trained for this fight while Fury looked
like he underestimated Ngannou. Or rather, his entire team did as Fury
said that Ngannou “is a lot better of a boxer than we thought he’d
be.”
Fury has a fight already scheduled against IBF, WBA, and IBO
Heavyweight Champion Oleksandr Usyk to unify the 4 heavyweight titles.
The fight was scheduled for December 23rd but will likely slip into
next year now. There’s been no official word on that as of the time
I’m writing this but unfortunately, many top boxers only fight once or
rarely twice a year no matter how grueling their fights are (or
aren’t). Of course, that’s because the money is so much more in boxing
that no one wants to risk and wants to be as close to 100% as
possible. Which is certainly understandable but I selfishly would like
to see the top guys fight more often. It’s not my body on the line,
though, so I don’t want to belabor my point.
Regardless, this was a very close and tough fight for Fury so I can’t
imagine him fighting again in 8 weeks.
For the record, Fury outstruck Ngannou 71-59 but was outstruck with
power punches 37-32. Two judges scored the fight for Fury with scores
of 96-93 and 95-94 while one judge scored it for Ngannou 95-94. The
1st, 4th, and 7th rounds seem to be the most contentious rounds. Those
were the ones where the judges deviated the most. For those that don’t
know, boxing judging isn’t that different from MMA judging but I’m not
going to go down that rabbit hole.
Ngannou looked really good and now there’s a huge swath of
possibilities waiting for him. There’s organizations and sanctioning
bodies to wade through so it’s nearly impossible to predict who he
fights next but there’s some big names out there waiting for him.
Ngannou could fight Deontay Wilder or Anthony Joshua. Maybe Daniel
Dubois or Frank Sanchez get involved? How about Otto Wallin? Point is,
there’s lots of guys out there who might want to jump in on this. And
many more names I didn’t mention.
The problem is, how many of those guys are going to want to take the
chance of losing to Ngannou? It would only be his second pro fight so
if you beat him some would dismiss it as expected. However, if you get
knocked out that could be catastrophic to your reputation. There would
be a lot of risk involved. I’m not saying it would end up as bad as it
did for Apollo Creed but there’s still tremendous risk.
Also, I do need to mention that Ngannou says he’ll have a MMA fight
for PFL next so whatever boxing match takes place next won’t be for a
while.
My new epic fantasy book is out. It’s called Kingdom of Zarias: The End’s
Beginning. The exciting epic fantasy series Kingdom of Zarias
returns with the 4th book in the series. After the harrowing events of
Book 3 the residents of the Kingdom of Zarias continue on their paths.
Serena Summers continues to learn and grow as a fighter, desperately
seeking to become stronger before she loses anyone else in her life.
Daniel Summers discovers new parts of the world that open his eyes to
just how little he truly knows. A new hero, Lamar Abeers, arrives to
join the fight against evil. Plus, Zach Summers, Tiana Highsmith, and
Xavien Ekens continue their journeys with their friends, and a new
ruler of Vhaharen is crowned. The world has found a little peace.
However, that peace is only temporary. In a shocking act of violence,
the monstrous villain Galren strikes from the shadows and changes the
world forever. This is Book 4 in the series. There’s lots of action,
magic, and monsters in the Kingdom of Zarias. It’s like a tabletop
game in novel form. It’s on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and many other
places. If you’re interested, I would greatly appreciate it if you
would check it out and support me. Also, here’s the link to my
Compendium book about the Kingdom of Zarias series- KoZ Compendium Thank you
very much, have a good day.
Comments and suggestions can be emailed to me at
hydenfrank@gmail.com and you can follow me on Twitter at @hydenfrank.
Thanks for reading and have a good day.
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