Ngannou's coach breaks down Fury fight: We have 'send-your-ass-to-sleep power'

Fighting Tyson Fury, the best heavyweight in boxing, is a daunting task for anyone.

Especially for someone who has never stepped into the ring in his life.

Francis Ngannou, the former UFC heavyweight champion and one of the hardest punchers in MMA history, will test his luck against Fury in his professional boxing debut Saturday in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. It's been Ngannou's lifelong dream to compete in boxing, and he finally gets the chance to do so after parting ways with the UFC as a free agent earlier this year.

There's no one more honest than Ngannou's longtime coach about the fact that it'll take a monumental effort to topple Fury.

Eric Nicksick, the head coach at Las Vegas' Xtreme Couture MMA gym who has worked with Ngannou for a number of years, told theScore ahead of the fight that Ngannou will have to take a unique approach if he wants to pull off one of the biggest upsets in combat sports history.

"How can we be unconventional versus such a conventional boxer?" Nicksick said of his mindset throughout the training camp. "How can we do things to maybe disrupt (his) rhythm and create havoc? Some things that (Deontay) Wilder I think had success with against Fury is he is kind of erratic. His punches come from different angles than most traditional-style boxers. Some of his knocks are he's not a clean-style boxer. But he found Fury's chin.

"I think if you're able to take what Francis is very, very good at ... and use some of our things that we do within MMA - stance switches, the different angles, things like that that maybe more conventional boxers aren't accustomed to - I think you're on the right track with those types of things," Nicksick said.

It'll be almost two years since Ngannou's last fight when he steps into the ring against Fury. "The Predator" suffered a torn MCL and damaged ACL in the weeks before a UFC title defense against Ciryl Gane in January 2022. Ngannou stayed in the fight and gutted out a unanimous decision win, but he spent the rest of the year recovering from knee surgery.

Then, after months of negotiations, Ngannou left the UFC in early 2023 after failing to come to terms on a new contract. He signed a monumental MMA deal with the PFL and is expected to debut in that promotion in early 2024.

This is by far the longest layoff of Ngannou's career, but Nicksick doesn't see ring rust being a factor.

"I think I'd be worried about it if he was just away from the sport completely," Nicksick said. "But the moment he got cleared by the UFC Performance Institute to be able to come back and get training in, he was back in the gym - sparring, grappling, and doing everything that he's supposed to do. There was a point where I was watching him spar guys in the UFC, and he was right back to the guy he was before the knee injury."

Perhaps Nicksick would be more concerned if Ngannou was expected to win. But he's not. Fury is a -1200 favorite and Ngannou is a +650 underdog. Fury holds the WBC heavyweight title and is considered the top heavyweight in boxing. Ngannou, of course, has never stepped into the ring as a professional before.

But that doesn't mean Team Ngannou expects to lose. Nicksick knows his fighter is "biting off a lot" by facing Fury in his first-ever boxing match. But he is glad Ngannou secured a fight with one of the biggest stars in the sport. And he believes Ngannou can get it done.

"We're out here playing with house money," Nicksick said. "So, let's go shoot our shot. And hey, if we get beat, we get beat. But I'm proud of this dude. And we're going to put our best foot forward, we're going to bust our ass, we're going to fight hard.

"At the end of the day, it is a fight, and the one thing that we do have is send-your-ass-to-sleep power."