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Rozenstruik is not a good kickboxer and MMA is very different striking-wise due to small gloves. MMA has tons of wannabe kickboxer types like MVP, Shara the one-eyed dagestani, blood diamond etc who never were good enough to win belts in major organisations at weight classes that mattered.
Stipe lost the second time around due to a stupid team on his part which made him weigh in at 234 instead of 250, thwarting his wrestling game. Ngannou does have a great chin on him. His coach is also really smart, eric coached Sean Strickland to a championship in an even more difficult division last month.
Remember, this is heavyweight where the worst of the worst fight. Ngannou would lose to most people if he straight-up boxed. Mousasi beat Kyotaro once, does that make Mousasi a better kickboxer than Kyotaro? no, styles make fights. Ngannou did well, Tyson did poorly and it is all heavyweight. This is not me saying it, the single greatest MMA fighter in my opinion, is GSP who regurgitated this on JRE once and how belts and legacies are constructs that exist just for selling PPVs and getting gullible people to invest in the sport.
Someone like Yoel Romero or Brock Lesnar were much better physical specimens than him and they would be much bigger what ifs. One off matches at heavyweights do not and will never mean much.
Maybe partly, but Ngannou looked much better as a wrestler in the second fight. Ngannou also carried his adaptations forward so I'm inclined to give him some credit: he became much more circumspect in general and wrestled Gane to a decision, the went the distance with Fury. Before the second Stipe fight that'd seem like a bad thing to bet on.
He also came in much more prepared for Fury than anyone expected so, at this point, I'm going to say he's a just very adaptable, trainable fighter.
I think HW has gotten better but yes, UFC HW is the best place for an athletic late starter with cinderblock hands and a good chin.
IMO that doesn't change that basically everyone expected Fury to do him like Wilder. That doesn't mean he's going to go beat Usyk or Joshua or have a long boxing career but you're underselling everyone's shock at seeing Francis come out disciplined and double jab, stance switch and clinch his way to a moral victory over 10 rounds (I think he took 3,7, & 8 but the rest are dubious)
Brock in MMA I grant because of the diverticulitis which hangs over his career. Romero...Romero had a long career in multiple combat sports. I don't see as big a what-if? What if he came to MMA earlier? I guess. But that's the thing about people who have mature skills in another sport: that's kind of their bread and butter, so it's harder to conceive of them as the same fighter if they just didn't do it.
lol agree with you on most things here. Any division beyond 170 has large gaping holes, MW and above lack decent wrestlers. Romero and Brock both were fairly late to MMA and Brock never even trained at a good camp like romero did. What I meant was that both were way better athletes with actual backgrounds to make it big but had age/health issues cut them short.
HW is still and will always be trash simply because very few people are 6'3 or above, plus the ones that have any semblance of physical gift will just prefer some other sport with more pay and less direct CTE.
Francis is also quite smart in the sense of who he trains with, he left MMA factory Paris for xtreme couture and that was a smart move.
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