David Haye wasn’t surprised at what Anthony Joshua did to former UFC heavyweight champion Francis Ngannou last Friday.
Haye saw it as a logical conclusion of what happens when you take a novice with a 0-1 record and match him up against Joshua, a 2012 Olympic gold medalist and former two-time heavyweight champion.
The Southpaw Blunder
One big mistake that Haye noticed with Ngannou was his decision to turn southpaw in the first round. Joshua immediately took advantage of this by nailing Ngannou with a straight right hand that dropped him.
AJ had a lot of experience against southpaws, especially recently with his fights against Otto Wallin and Oleksandr Usyk. He put in a lot of work preparing for those matches, so it was a foolish idea for Ngannou to switch from orthodox to southpaw in the opening round.
Whether this was his idea or his trainer’s is unclear, but it was the wrong thing to do against AJ. From that point, Ngannou never seemed to recover and was quickly taken out in round two.
A Harsh Reality Check
“I witnessed a professional world-class Olympic champion, two-time heavyweight champion boxing a man that has had one boxing match in his life,” said David Haye to the iFL TV site, talking about Anthony Joshua’s victory over Francis Ngannou.
It was shocking that this fight was allowed to go ahead in the first place, as you normally don’t see a former two-time champion fighting a 0-1 novice.
Those fights would never happen because they wouldn’t be sanctioned, and they’re totally useless for the fighter with the experience. The Saudis wanted this crazy fight, and they paid big money for it.
Moving forward, hopefully, they learn from this and stop doing these non-sporting fights because it’s not fair and not a good thing for the fans that purchase these events.
“I didn’t expect it, but I kind of hoped it. I expected that with Tyson Fury. The result here, I expected Tyson to do to him,” said Haye. “The last two opponents Joshua has had were Otto Wallin and Ngannou. On both occasions, Tyson Fury really struggled, struggled badly.”
No Easy Path for Ngannou
“Yeah, but he’d have to work his way up like any boxer,” said Haye when asked if he thinks Ngannou can come back from this to continue fighting. “He looked very crude, very wide. He turned southpaw and just got hit right down the pipe, which I said would happen.
Ngannou isn’t going to “work his way up like any boxer,” as Haye says, as he only wants big money, and he won’t get that when learning fights against second-tier fighters. He’s going to want the Saudis or some other promoter to throw crazy money at him for a PPV fight, which will have no hope of being competitive.
The fans will get ripped off, and Ngannou will be destroyed again and again.At some point, it’s going to be so wretched that the Saudis and the promoters won’t want to waste their money using him. Hopefully, this was the last time Ngannou is used as a main-event fighter.
“AJ has a good style against a southpaw, having so many successful fights against Otto Wallin,” said Haye. “He’s had 24 rounds against Usyk, and even though he didn’t win most of the rounds, he had the sparring in training with southpaws.
“So, as soon as Ngannou turned southpaw, and he’s not even had a lot of work at orthodox. But as soon as he turned southpaw, AJ did what I hoped he would do to drill him right down the middle,” said Haye.
