Ever since Tyson Fury beat Francis Ngannou with a split-decision judgment on October 23rd, 2023, there has been a lot of controversy surrounding the authenticity of his win. Some people even called for the investigation of the judges who handed Fury the Victory. So, the real question is – “Did Tyson Fury actually lose that fight?” and the straight answer is no!
Before you bully me in the comments section. Listen to the reasons why I think Fury’s win is justified.
First, let me explain why most people may disagree with me.
It’s because There’s a psychological bias on the topic.
Social media can be dangerous, and the first opinion on a social media post could decide the direction of the response of many people commenting afterward. We see the result of this psychological bias in our everyday lives, and it heavily manifests in anything that hits the social media space.
The public consensus is that this fight was rigged, and Fury lost. A reason behind this agreement is that Fury was largely the favourite going into that fight. The betting odds of – 1400 for Fury as the favourite against Ngannou’s + 750 as an underdog on some betting sites tell it all.
The underdog status of Ngannou was further solidified an online viral training video that seemed to show Ngannou boxing like an amateur. As usual, everyone blindly ran away with the opinion that the fight would be one-sided, as they are doing right now. We human beings never learn our lesson. Our hearts often rule over our brains. However, Fury’s performance on the fight night fell way behind people’s expectations. In such a case the underdog bias kicks in and dictates people’s conclusion, and that conclusion is that Ngannou won the close fight. When such a sentimental opinion is echoed almost everyone around you, it becomes easy to adopt it, even when it’s not true. That’s purely psychological. Ngannou doing far above people’s expectations in a close fight is different from Ngannou going all the way to win the fight, but his brilliant performance was enough to sway the neutrals and doubters to his side.
The fight was close and when a match is that close people are more likely to give the victory to the underdog than the other way round. Everyone wants to see fairy tale stories come to life. It’s good for our morale, it’s good for the news, it’s good for motivational speeches, and it’s good for entertainment. Who doesn’t want to experience the real-life version of the Cinderella man during his or her lifetime? Disney and other storytelling companies have been able to capitalize on the part of human nature that wants to see the Impossible happen to make billions of dollars through their movies. People often want to see stories close to such scintillating works of fiction end in favour of the underdog. It happened to Leicester City in the English football premier league in the year 2016. Oh boy! I loved that one. Unfortunately, that didn’t happen in the Fury versus Ngannou fight.
Another reason some people wanted Ngannou to win as an Underdog is the unlikability of the character Tyson Fury portrays. In modern days, the Big Bully character of someone like Tyson Fury generates mixed feelings among fans and people seem to not like a boastful, thrash-talking character as much as they did during the Mohammed Ali era.
However, what makes Fury’s case worse is the widely held belief that he ducks challenging fights and cherry-picks weak opponents to preserve his unbeaten record till he retires from the sport. Despite that, many people still enjoy the antics of Tyson Fury. Fury certainly knows how to up the hype around a fight and that’s one of the reasons why his fights sell well. He was even able to sell one of the worst fights in the history of heavyweight boxing, The Fury Chisora 3 fight. An absolute mismatch.
Tyson Fury literarily escaped defeat a whisker in his match against Ngannou. But that’s not enough reason to deny him the victory. One thing that added salt to Fury’s injury was how professionals, retired boxers, journalists, promoters, and popular boxing business figures went with the flow of concluding that Francis Ngannou won the fight. It’s very easy for fans to hold on to a belief strongly when such a belief is shared wildly YouTube influencers and popular figures they trust. So, the news of Ngannou being robbed is much stronger in the social media space than the common-sense fact that Tyson Fury won a tight match.
Now let me tell you why I think Fury won.
1. Compubox and Numbers.
Compubox, a computerized punches scoring system run two operators revealed that Fury landed more punches overall and it’s not even very close. If the result of the CompuBox coincides with the judgment of the fight judges, then there’s more reason to believe Tyson won. This didn’t come as any surprise because Tyson Fury was more on the offensive than Ngannou, the Predator throughout the fight. Francis Ngannou was very disciplined and threw a lesser number of punches. Though a lot of credit goes to Francis Ngannou, the underdog, for throwing more power punches. At the end of the day, those Power punches resulted in a knockdown but not a Knockout, and their impact didn’t offset the overall performance gap between the two fighters. Fury landed 71 out of his 223 punches while Ngannou landed 59 of his 231 attempted punches. Conversely, Ngannou landed 37 power shots compared to Fury’s 32. Fury also won 6 out of the fight’s ten rounds. With these numbers, it’s glaring that Fury won.
2. Mike Tyson’s neutral public stance on the fight judgment.
Mike Tyson, one of the greatest pound-for-pound boxers of all time, was Francis Ngannou’s Trainer for the fight. Mike has refused to publicly say that Francis was robbed. No one should want to support a fighter in the face of a controversial judgment than his trainer. If Tyson is doing anything short of publicly declaring his fighter as the winner of the boxing match, then everyone doing so should be cautious.
Whenever Tyson Fury is asked about who won the fight, he always avoids giving a straight response that stands for a singular stance or opinion on the topic, in the way many influential figures have done. He has yet to directly say his fighter won and they were cheated. Successful people like Tyson have been in the limelight for some time and understand how necessary it is for them not to slip in the face of a public interview voicing the common opinion rather than the logical, unemotional, and factual opinion that they have. Tyson understands that he wisely needs to stay neutral in such a circumstance, and in this case that can very much be interpreted as an acceptance of the judgment, at least to a substantial extent. The only thing that Mike Tyson has been reiterating is that Ngannou exceeded his expectations. Mike Tyson’s silence on the issue is proof that the match was close, and the Judges got it right. Lennox Lewis, the last undisputed heavyweight champion of the world, has not been carried away the wave of public opinion in favor of Ngannou. Lennox Lewis made it clear when airing his opinion on TNT Sports that Fury won. Despite being opposed other journalists on the show, he stood his decision. Mike Tyson is doing something similar not declaring Francis as the winner of the fight till now.
The media thrives on both negativity and controversy, so you should expect the media to fan the flames of this controversy for clicks and views while they know the Judgement is right. They’re going to milk this controversial story for as long as they can. But the truth is that Fury won. It wasn’t a convincing win, which can assert his dominance in modern boxing but that was enough to keep him alive for his next big fight against Usyk, which is a title fight where a new undisputed heavyweight champion of the world will be crowned. A win is always a win, and it always feels good, no matter how it comes. That’s not to say judges don’t get it wrong sometimes or that corruption doesn’t happen in boxing, as we saw in the Lewis vs Holyfield exhibition fight and probably in the Timothy Bradley Vs Manny Pacquiao first fight. That was shameful but that isn’t what we saw in the Fury versus Ngannou fight.
Even if you dislike Fury for ducking fights, or thrash talking. Always remember that anything he does to get you talking about him on social media or in public is entertainment. We need to be less hypocritical about vocal and entertaining fighters like Fury because what he does keeps the social media boxing news space alive. It’s good for Journalists, Enthusiasts, Fans, and everyone.