Dream Boxing-MMA Matchups We'd Love to See After Fury-Ngannou

Big appetites need big whetting.

So what better way to stoke the idea of matching boxers against mixed martial arts practitioners than by pitting the ring's consensus heavyweight champion against the most recent man to defend a claim as the most destructive big man in the Octagon?

That's precisely what occurred Saturday in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, where Tyson Fury met Francis Ngannou in a special event for which no official titles were at stake beyond revival of the old-school Mike Tyson claim that the winner would be the "Baddest Man on the Planet."

Fury climbed off the floor from a shocking third-round knockdown and eventually earned a split decision in which he won two official scorecards by three points and one point, respectively, while Ngannou took the dissenting card by a one-point margin as well.

The B/R card had it 96-93 for Fury, matching judge Juan Carlos Pelayo.

The crossover vibe stoked in the desert was enough to get the B/R team thinking about fighters on both sides of the combat aisle who might be willing (and able) to take the competitive step and actually match up with a practicing professional on the other side.

Take a look at what we came up with and drop a thought of your own in the comments.

Fool us once, shame on you. Fool us twice, shame on us?

Maybe.

But this one might not be quite as crazy as it sounds.

Given Fury's success on Saturday against Ngannou, who held the UFC heavyweight belt before a feud with Dana White—fueled largely by White's reluctance to let Ngannou compete as a boxer—it seems only natural that he'd now want to chase Ngannou's successor.

Jon Jones earned the vacated belt with a quick finish of Ciryl Gane, whose kickboxing chops had allowed for a pristine record as a Muay Thai fighter, and was specifically called out by Fury when the boxing king was asked what he would seek after beating Ngannou.

Fury is much taller and longer than Jones, as he was against Ngannou, but he'd be in for an entirely new experience in a cage against the man considered the top pound-for-pound MMA fighter in the world thanks largely to wrestling chops that yielded a national junior college championship at Iowa Central Community College.

"Why not?" Fury told Bleacher Report.

"After I take out the guy everyone says is the toughest out there, it makes sense that I'd go after the next guy, right? It's all about entertainment and giving the people what they want. I'm the only heavyweight boxer. I'm the only boxer, period, that could pull this off.

"So why not challenge myself to do something that'll [go] down in history?"

Sean O'Malley is the UFC's latest "it" guy.

He's got wild hair, a prodigious persona and as high a profile as exists in MMA.

And he became a champion in his most recent fight, showing immense stand-up skills on the way to a second-round finish of then-bantamweight claimant Aljamain Sterling atop the UFC 292 show at the TD Garden in Boston.

Sterling was pressing early in the round and lunged forward as he launched a left hand that O'Malley saw, eluded by subtly leaning backward to his right, and countered with his own right hand that landed squarely on Sterling's jaw and led to a TKO moments later.

"It's the angles, guys," analyst Daniel Cormier said on the broadcast. "The way that he moves and pivots. He sets you up."

They're the sort of boxing-related chops not always seen in Octagons, and it makes O'Malley a particularly interesting candidate to make the sport vs. sport jump. And he fueled the fire with a subsequent callout of Gervonta Davis, a former pupil of Floyd Mayweather Jr. who's 29-0 with 27 KOs in the ring and has claimed title belts from 126 to 140 pounds.

"I'm telling you, that fight is going to happen," O'Malley said at the press conference following the defeat of Sterling. "I would love to go out there and box him. I feel like it could happen sooner than later, but I also know the UFC is down to get behind stuff like that if it's big enough."

Terence Crawford has done it all in the boxing ring.

He started as a pro in 2008, earned a championship at 135 pounds within six years, and added subsequent titles at 140 and 147 pounds in 2015 and 2018, respectively.

And he climbed his highest competitive mountain in his most recent event, hammering longtime welterweight rival and fellow claimant Errol Spence Jr. into submission in nine rounds to become one of the few undisputed, four-belt champions in the sport.

So it's not surprising his mind might wander to other challenges.

He's mentioned climbing a few weight divisions to tangle with Canelo Alvarez or rising seven pounds to meet Alvarez's most recent victim, Jermell Charlo. But he's also dropped hints now and then that he'd be willing to make an even more prodigious jump to MMA.

And the foil he'd most want to engage upon arrival? Conor McGregor.

You remember McGregor? He's the guy who lit Octagons ablaze while winning belts in a pair of weight divisions and essentially kick-started the crossover craze when he lured Floyd Mayweather Jr. out of retirement for a vault-emptying boxing match in 2017.

This time, it'd be Crawford crossing the boundary line to chase his own bag of cash.

"They put that money up, hell yeah I'll go over there and fight him," Crawford told TMZ Sports in 2020. "Conor is a big talent in the Octagon, and I'm a big talent in the boxing ring. Money talks.

"To keep it real, Conor's not a real good wrestler. He may kick the s--t out of you. You gotta worry about them kicks to the head and them elbows more than him grabbing you. It'd be other things that you'd be having to worry about other than wrestling you."

There was a time when Jorge Masvidal was as big as it got in combat sports.

The Miami-born trash-talker made his name in street fights before crossing over to become an MMA superstar, thanks in no small part to his powerful personality and the unforgettable highlight yielded by his five-second KO of Ben Askren at UFC 239 in 2019.

His run peaked when he became the promotion's "BMF" champion with a defeat of Nate Diaz at Madison Square Garden four months later, and he fought four more times—including two welterweight title shots—before retiring following a loss in April at UFC 287 in Miami.

But the competitive itch is a difficult one to scratch.

Particularly when there's money being made by former rivals like Askren and Diaz, each of whom subsequently has met and lost to Jake Paul in the boxing ring. Paul, incidentally, was included on Forbes' list of the world's 50 highest-paid athletes in 2022.

So it's hardly a surprise to hear that Masvidal is pondering a trip of his own to the boxing ring early next year, though he's been a bit light on details. Paul, by the way, was expected to announce an opponent for his would-be December 15 return to the ring on Friday night but instead said that the planned rival dropped out due to issues securing a visa to enter the U.S.

Could it be Masvidal stepping up to fill the void? Stay tuned.

"No names right now," Masvidal told ESPN, "but I can tell you it's early next year and I can tell you somebody is going to get killed."

Hey, if you're going to dream, dream big.

Lest anyone forget, too, some dreams do come true.

Claressa Shields is a decorated Olympic boxer and even more decorated professional in the ring, having won world women's championships in three weight divisions since 2017.

And she's already blazed a successful crossover trail, competing in and splitting a pair of MMA bouts with the emerging Professional Fighters League promotion in 2021, winning one by a third-round TKO and losing another by a split, three-round decision.

She's been asked about unique fight ideas several times along the way, with the initial suggestions that she fight a man eventually giving way to an occasional claim or two that she ought to engage a high-profile MMA fighter. Specifically, one named Ronda Rousey.

Rousey was the baddest woman on the planet during a headline run in the UFC cage that saw her claim and defend the bantamweight title six times before a loss to Holly Holm, a former professional boxer herself, at UFC 193 in November 2015.

One more fight, a loss to all-time great Amanda Nunes, preceded Rousey's retirement from the cage and conversion to sports entertainment as a WWE performer. But she's made rumblings about wanting to return for the UFC's 300th pay-per-view show that's penciled in for early spring in 2024.

It's a huge event and there'd be no bigger novelty than a dance with Shields.

"(Rousey) just had a match at SummerSlam and is looking to wind down her time and commitments with the WWE," a source, labeled as a Rousey confidant, told Sadie Whitelocks of the Daily Mail, "and she is now focusing on potentially making a run to have one last fight in the UFC and compete at UFC 300 when that presents itself sometime next year."

Max Holloway is one of the UFC's greatest all-time featherweights.

He won the belt in 2017 and defended three times before dropping it to still-reigning champ Alexander Volkanovski in the first fight of their eventual trilogy series in 2019.

Along the way, he announced himself as the holder of another title, too.

"Best boxer in the UFC."

He verbally awarded himself that belt during a chat with Bleacher Report in 2021 and suggested then that the idea of crossing over to fight an actual ring professional was something that intrigued him.

"I'm the best boxer in the UFC," he said. "Use your imagination, my friends. That's all I can say. We live in a wild time. We've seen wild fights being made. Just use your imagination."

Two years later, he's putting a name with the supposition.

Gervonta Davis. Yes, the same Gervonta Davis mentioned by Sean O'Malley.

So we'll see who gets to him first, the reigning bantamweight champ or the former featherweight champ.

"Let's make a big fight with 'Tank' or something," Holloway told The MMA Hour. "Floyd Mayweather and 'Tank,' 'Tank' is following Floyd Mayweather's recipe to the key. So, why not he fight a MMA guy and we do a big one? I can s--t talk to him. Just don't put no hydration clause in it like how he did to my man (Ryan) Garcia. That would be a fun one."