Joe Rogan Still Insists “The Fix Was In” For Tyson Fury vs. Francis Ngannou Clash

Podcaster Joe Rogan has millions and millions of listeners and makes millions and millions of dollars. And while his takes on politics, culture, science, history, and just about everything else can be debated and dissected, there’s one subject matter where he’s proven himself to be irrefutably full of sh*t– boxing.

Rogan does NOT know boxing.

He talks boxing. He, presumably, assumes that, because he’s deep into the world of the UFC and MMA, he also has some insight into the sport of boxing. He doesn’t.

The latest reminder of this came on a recent edition of his JRE MMA Show, where he talked with UFC legend Quinton “Rampage” Jackson.

Rogan Says The Fix Was In

When the subject of Tyson Fury’s split decision victory over former UFC heavyweight champ Francis Ngannou last October came up, Rogan doubled down on his previous assertion that the fix was in.

“I thought he won that fight,” Rogan said. “But, you know, they were setting up that [Oleksandr] Usyk fight. They were not gonna let– yeah, it just seemed like the fix was in a little bit.”

“It was close enough that they could pull it off,” he added. “You could go, ‘Okay, maybe. Maybe you could see him winning that,’ but I don’t think so. I thought Francis won it. A lot of people thought Francis won it.”

This wasn’t the first time Rogan’s novice eyes made that wrong assertion.

In a previous take, the podcaster would declare Ngannou’s performance that evening in Saudi Arabia was “amazing” and “one of the greatest combat sports performances in the history of the arts,” coming against, perhaps, “the greatest heavyweight…of all time.” He would go on to insist that the judge who scored the bout 96-93 for Fury “should go to jail.”

Nope.

Where do we start with this? Probably with the fact that the only judge who actually got the scoring right was the one who Rogan would send to jail.

Francis Ngannou deserves a ton of respect for what he’s accomplished in life, period. But he didn’t win the Fury fight and didn’t come close to winning, not even against a Tyson Fury who was out of shape and playing around in the first part of the fight, switching from orthodox to southpaw. Other than the flash knockdown he scored in the third round, he just didn’t do much else of note. An out of shape and unfocused Fury, realistically, took seven of ten rounds.

Here’s this writer’s take on the fight immediately after it took place:

“Fury, who sported the love-handled dad bod shared by most on press row, fought less like a top dog and more like a lap dog who had over-indulged in treats and belly rubs and now lacked the fire to snap at an intruder. Dropped in the third round by a sloppy Ngannou left hook, Fury was also bloodied in the forehead and battered around the left eye en route to an embarrassingly close split decision win…

Contrary to the ultra-silly post-fight bluster from media and fans, [Francis Ngannou] did NOT turn in a masterful performance against Fury, though. The native of Cameroon boxed better than anticipated against a Tyson Fury who fought significantly worse than expected.

My cynical boxing brain tells me that the ‘Gypsy King’ was trying to carry Ngannou for a few rounds, but then got clipped and dropped in the third. From there, plans went sideways and the fight morphed from a clown show into a real fight– a real fight that Fury was ill-prepared to engage in.

People also got carried away with ‘Ngannou was robbed’ nonsense. No, he didn’t win this fight. It was a reasonable 96-93 for Fury after factoring in the knockdown. Ngannou didn’t do a whole lot outside of that knockdown.

But, still, it was way closer than it should’ve been and it gave plenty of fuel to the UFC/MMA knuckleheads to come out with their “boxing sucks” bullsh*t. Notably, combat sports media gadfly (or is it fruit fly?) Ariel Helwani, who’s been cashing some sizable boxing checks recently, would chime in via social media about the ‘smug boxing public’ and how Ngannou ‘would beat Wilder, Chisora, Whyte or anyone else’ boxing fans suggest he fight…”

In Ngannou’s next boxing match, by the way, he’d face former heavyweight champ Anthony Joshua, who would actually take their fight seriously and easily crush him in two rounds.

Joe Rogan and all the other casual boxing observers who still insist that Ngannou deserved that decision over Fury are just wrong. It’s as easy as that. There ARE sh*tty decisions in boxing– way too many of them. But Fury-Ngannou was not one of them.

And in case some still doubt Rogan’s status as almost universally wrong in his boxing takes, here’s one from his archive of wrongness, where he insisted that the Mike Tyson-Roy Jones exhibition sham in 2020– where they danced around for eight two-minute rounds en route to a split decision draw– would be a life and death war:

“I guarantee you when that bell goes off, that is going to be a f*cking fight. Mike Tyson is not fighting any exhibitions. He’s gonna come bobbing and weaving, swinging death with each hand, and Roy Jones Jr. is going to be moving and throwing that nasty left hook…and let the best man win. But that is going to be a fight. I can’t imagine those two legends are just gonna move around…I can’t imagine a world where someone doesn’t connect and some crazy sh*t doesn’t happen.”