Dillian Whyte says Francis Ngannou’s “false confidence” was punished by Anthony Joshua and he fully expected the MMA star to be brutally beaten.
Joshua ruthlessly overpowered Ngannou on Friday night,
flooring the former UFC heavyweight champion twice before a huge right hand ended the fight in the second round in Saudi Arabia.
But Whyte was far from surprised by the outcome as he believes Ngannou failed to fix technical flaws after dropping Tyson Fury in a hotly-disputed split-decision defeat last October.
“Francis is not experienced enough to beat the top guys. He got a bit complacent because he did well against Fury but Fury didn’t take him seriously,” Whyte told Sky Sports.
“Fury just thought he was going to outbox him and he gave Fury some problems but that was his undoing.
“I think that fight gave him false confidence to the point where, when he was getting hammered with big punches, he stayed in the pocket and he wasn’t trying to move his head or hold or anything.
“He went down, stood up in the same place. Didn’t move his head, went down, stood up in the same place and basically waited for the third right hand.
So, I knew it was going to happen and I picked AJ to win anyway.
“AJ is a puncher and you don’t just stand up in front of someone like AJ with your hands basically down and then switching stances mid-fight against a right-handed puncher. Why did he go southpaw? It didn’t make any sense.
“I just knew that AJ’s experience and his power would be too much. I thought Francis would be a little bit better, to be honest, but Francis… he’s doing boxing, but it’s not recognised boxing training so he hasn’t covered the basics.
“Someone like AJ, an experienced gold medallist, all these world title fights, he covers the basics on a daily basis and that is where Francis came unstuck.”
Whyte, who was originally linked with an Ngannou fight before Fury and Joshua, believes he would have inflicted a similar result.
