Anthony Joshua knocked out Francis Ngannou in the second round of their high-profile fight today in Saudi Arabia, scoring three knockouts in two rounds en route to an effortless victory.

Ngannou (0-2) had a decent first round before foolishly switching to southpaw and getting dropped. Ngannou stayed orthodox in the second round but was dropped again by Joshua’s clearly superior timing, then brutally finished the fight with a monstrous right hand.

The official time of the knockout is 2:38 in the second round.

No disrespect to Ngannou, but that’s the point should This is what happens when a novice boxer from the world of mixed martial arts fights a top professional, although of course this was not always the case.

Tyson Fury, who was watching from the crowd, absolutely did not do that to Ngannou last year and it turns out that maybe trying to clinch with a guy who knows a lot more about the clinch from his day job and is physically stronger than you is actually not a good idea.

Using his boxing skills and instincts honed over many years, Joshua (28-3, 25 KOs) did quite well, and he doesn’t really prove anything with this win to anyone outside of the WBC and the DAZN television crew, but he did make a lot of money and put his name on the front pages of newspapers, which is where we are today in many ways in the sport.

“That’s the way it is,” Joshua said after the fight. “He’s a great champion and that doesn’t take anything away from his ability. He can come back. I told him he shouldn’t retire. He can do well. He’s had two fights and he’s fought the best. He can go very far if he stays committed, but it’s up to him.

Joshua has said he wants to pick the winner of the May 18 fight between Tyson Fury and Oleksandr Usyk next, but that will be challenging to do given that Fury and Usyk are under contract for two fights, but promoter Eddie Hearn has said that he has told Turki Alalshikh that Joshua will fight the winner of Fury vs Usyk.

“In this form, there is no man in the world who can beat him,” Hearn said.

Canelo Alvarez has made it official: he will fight Jaime Munguia in the main event of a pay-per-view on May 4 in Las Vegas.

“Mexicans on the war cry,” Canelo wrote on social media. “See you May 4th at T-Mobile in Las Vegas.”

The poster artwork that Alvarez shared with the announcement features the Premier Boxing Champions (PBC) and Prime Video logos, which also confirms that after parting ways with PBC after one fight of his three-fight contract, he remains with the team for at least some time after this fight.

Reports surfaced on Thursday that the Canelo-Munguia fight was already being finalized and that it would be Canelo (60-2-2, 39 KOs) working with PBC on a one-fight deal, but DAZN would also be willing to carry the fight on pay-per-view, which really adds to the number of outlets available and seems like a reasonable deal overall.

For example, we’ve seen both DAZN and ESPN+ enable pay-per-view event sales in the recent past, and this would be similar across both streaming platforms.

Munguia (43-0, 34 KO) will face Canelo for the undisputed super middleweight title.

We previously reported that Jaron “Boots” Ennis would defend his IBF welterweight title in the main event against Cody Crowley.

Francis Ngannou was crushed by Anthony Joshua in Saudi Arabia on Friday, brutally knocked out in the second round of his second professional boxing fight.

The former UFC heavyweight champion went down three times, including a brutal final right hand that ended it all, and it was a much different experience to last October when he faced Tyson Fury and lost a 10-round split decision.

“I’m sorry guys, I let you all down,” Ngannou said. “Today was a bad day at the office, but tomorrow will be a different day. Thanks for all the love.”

Ngannou is a likeable guy, at least when it comes to his boxing efforts. Confident, but not arrogant. He clearly took it seriously and tried to do his best. Delusional? Sure, but in some ways—not all—that’s a good, even necessary thing for any professional fighter to be. You have to believe you can win to have a chance.

Against Tyson Fury, who was treating this all as “a bit of fun” and clearly hadn’t trained much, Ngannou shocked the world even without a win. Not only was Fury out of shape and noticeably cushioned even for him – he wasn’t exactly a “lovely body” guy – but then he took a comically bad approach, trying to lean in and clinch with someone who, by pedigree, was significantly better than Fury at that sort of thing, not to mention the fact that Ngannou is much stronger physically.

Ngannou kind of bullied Fury and dropped him once. Judging by how boxing fights are actually scored, I thought Fury won, but it was one of the most uninspiring wins you’ll ever see. And the real winner was really Francis Ngannou, who shouldn’t have been able to compete with Tyson Fury like that.

On Friday, the chickens came home to roost against Anthony Joshua. To be fair, Joshua did what a decent world-class boxer should do against someone who is recent to the craft. Ngannou was actually doing well in the first round until an ill-advised switch to southpaw saw him slammed to the canvas in brief order.

Changing attitude is something that very few seasoned professionals can do well at the highest level; it’s very, very hard to do well. Ngannou’s attempt against Joshua is an example of the downside of the aforementioned necessary illusion. At best, he just didn’t understand that he wasn’t good enough to do it because no one showed him what a bad idea that was. AJ helped him figure that out quickly.

Ngannou never went back to being a southpaw, but he didn’t get many opportunities either. When he got knocked down in the first round, Joshua saw everything he wanted to see. He’s a three-belt heavyweight champion as a pro and an Olympic gold medalist 12 years ago. I tend to agree with John Fury that Joshua has learned on the job and gotten better at a lot of things over time, and the recent look he got in training camp over the last few years has also improved him.

In the second round, Joshua waited for his chance. He dropped Ngannou for the second time and realistically, referee Ricky Gonzalez could have stopped the fight at that point. When the action resumed, Ngannou sat idle and AJ didn’t cheat.

Right hand. Ballgame — on the way to pure devastation.

After the dust settled, Ngannou was being urged to continue his boxing career by Joshua (28-3, 25 KOs), but the 37-year-old is currently 0-2 and this kind of one-sided beating will significantly reduce his marketability as a professional boxer.

So should Ngannou keep boxing?

The brief answer is yes, at least if the money is there. He signed with MMA promotion PFL after a bitter split with UFC, but he hasn’t fought in the sport in more than two years, and at his age, such a long layoff from any competition risks seeing you come back, having lost “it” in the process.

But who would the money be against? If the Saudis – who don’t care about money like a typical fight promoter, because they have an infinite supply of it – pay for Ngannou vs. Deontay Wilder, there’s a monstrous plot there, even if Wilder is coming off a disastrous performance against Joseph Parker in December and has never been less attractive on the market. Again, it doesn’t matter to the Saudis any more than it does to Eddie Hearn, Frank Warren or someone who invests their own money, but it doesn’t matter either NO material. And if not Deontay, then who?

The difficult truth is that there are far more professional boxers than just the top names that Ngannou could get fired up against. When the idea of ​​him taking up boxing was first floated a few years ago, he met with Eddie Hearn, who wanted to push him straight into a fight with Joshua. At the time, Joshua wasn’t interested in a “gimmick” fight.

The reason Hearn wanted to make the Joshua vs. Ngannou fight happen immediately was plain, and he admitted it openly: if Ngannou tried to “get his feet damp” by fighting some weaker professional boxer, he could simply lose and squander his chances of making a ton of money over the course of at least a single fight.

That’s true now. If Ngannou tries to fight anyone above the total score, to get one or two wins in the ring, he has a very high risk of just losing, and losing at a level far below Fury and Joshua. Someone like Michael Coffie or Faiga Opelu, not some top names or contenders, could just crush him. And then what?

Ngannou continuing to box in this manner carries a great risk, not only to his career in the sweet science, but to whatever is left of his MMA career. This loss, the manner in which it happened, will sting for some time. Ngannou is proud, and while rational logic says he has nothing to be ashamed of for the way his boxing “career” has turned out, rational logic is for those on the outside. He made it happen. The money will ease his part, but it is also on the verge of being significantly diminished, if not dried up, and at his age, time is running out for him to earn more in gigantic chunks.

The decision Ngannou makes about his future is crucial. And I’m still at least a little interested, because he’s easily made me a fan of both sports.