After Sean
Strickland’s shocking win over Israel
Adesanya last month, Xtreme Couture coach Eric Nicksick is
plotting yet another massive upset.
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Francis
Ngannou left his previous gym, The MMA Factory in Paris, in
2020 for Xtreme Couture after his loss to Stipe
Miocic in their first encounter. “The Predator” would go on to
become UFC heavyweight champion under Nicksick’s tutelage.
Ngannou left the UFC earlier this year after failed contract
negotiations and is now scheduled to fight heavyweight boxing champ
Tyson
Fury in a crossover match on Oct. 28 in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.
If the Cameroonian can beat arguably the greatest heavyweight
pugilist of all time in his boxing debut, it certainly would go
down in the history books.
Nicksick believes Ngannou has a fair shot. Nicksick noted how
Deontay
Wilder scored an almost fight-ending knockdown over “The Gypsy
King” in their first encounter. According to the Xtreme Couture
coach, it is unorthodox styles like Wilder’s which confuse
technical boxers like Fury. Nicksick believes Ngannou can use the
“booger” style to make Fury uncomfortable with unconventional
stances and angles.
“It’s not a term of disrespect,” Nicksick told
MMAFighting.com. “It’s just like when you watch two guys who
are very, very technical fighters, they just are working on this
sharpness of technique back and forth. Whereas, if you put a
technical fighter against a booger, he’s not used to that erratic
motion and stuff coming from different angles and stuff coming from
different stances. Doing all this stuff that we do within MMA.
“I think it’s going to be key for us to not try to outbox Tyson Fury.
I think if we get in a situation where it’s like, ‘Hey, we’re going
to out-technique this guy,’ we’re going to be in trouble. It’s up
to us to come up with creative ways on how to approach this.”