4 Best Opponents for Francis Ngannou's Next Fight

Well, it was fun while it lasted, no?

A year ago at this time, Francis Ngannou was a deposed UFC heavyweight champion looking to begin the next chapter in an already decorated combat sports career.

He found his muse in the form of heavyweight boxing champ Tyson Fury, who agreed to fight him and ultimately did last October in Saudi Arabia, providing the Cameroonian a stage and a paycheck he'd never commanded in the environment.'

And when Ngannou dropped Fury and pushed him to the limit in what wound up as a 10-round split-decision loss, the new career seemed imminent. He was quickly installed as a No. 10 contender by the World Boxing Council and approached a follow-up fight with two-time ex-champ Anthony Joshua with a chance to become a global player in the ring.

Less than six competitive minutes later, we may need a rewrite.

Rather than pushing a perceived vulnerable Joshua to his competitive limits, Ngannou was repeatedly drilled with the sorts of shots experienced boxers land on newcomers and quickly succumbed via second-round KO atop a pay-per-view card in Saudi Arabia.

It was a stunningly abrupt fall for the octagonal menace and it prompted the B/R combat team to ponder what his next career might be in the aftermath. Take a look at what we came up with and drop a thought of your own in the comments.

Who's had a better five months than Joseph Parker?

The respected but not widely known former WBO champ was in the Saudi desert for a win on the Ngannou-Fury undercard last October and returned two months later for a shockingly one-sided decision defeat of ex-WBC champ Deontay Wilder.

And he was back yet again Friday for yet another upset, climbing off the deck twice for a majority decision over reigning WBO interim title claimant Zhilei Zhang.

It may not position him for an instant championship shot given the belts are committed for the Fury-Usyk series and he's already lost 31 of 36 rounds against Joshua in their three-belt unification match six years ago at Principality Stadium in Cardiff, Wales.

So why not give both him and Ngannou another chance to grab the Saudi bag and get together in a bout that'll either reinvigorate the MMA star's ring career or end it for good?

At 6'4" and near 250 pounds, Parker doesn't present nearly the physical challenge as Fury or Joshua, which could allow Ngannou to be the bully that seems to best suit his skill set.

Boxing has Fury-Usyk. MMA has Ngannou-Jones.

As anyone who follows UFC will tell you, Ngannou never lost his octagonal title belt in the cage, instead having it stripped from him when his feud with Dana White over extracurricular ring activities finally got to a "don't go away mad, just go away" point last winter.

Jon Jones stepped into the breach last March and took out Ciryl Gane to scoop up Ngannou's discarded jewelry, but the attractiveness of a dream match between the two has never faded. After all, Jones is considered by many to be the greatest MMA fighter of all time, while Ngannou was climbing the all-time heavyweight ranks before his exit.

His signing a deal with the rival PFL organization probably KO's the idea that he'd ever return to a UFC cage, but it wouldn't be too hard to envision Jones and Ngannou going outside the sanctioning apparatus to stage a winner-take-all-type showdown in Riyadh or its environs.

Given Dana's unapologetic love for money, he might find a reason to sign off on it, too.

It may be the least lucrative option.

But it's probably where Ngannou both needs and ought to go.

The sheer devastation of the KO loss to Joshua both compromised his consciousness and damaged his brand. So now, rather than crediting him with a valiant effort against consensus No. 1 heavyweight Fury, it's now dismissed as a fluky night against an unprepared foe.

That means his best chance to remain relevant is back in the cage.

Meanwhile, PFL heavyweight champion Renan Ferreira's star has never been and may never be brighter on the heels of his 21-second vaporizing of Bellator titleholder Ryan Bader.

It's the stuff that crossroads fights are made of.

Trainer Eric Nicksick said before the Ferreira-Bader fight that a match with the 6'8" Brazilian was most attractive to Ngannou on the MMA side, and now that a boxing title shot isn't an imminent option it makes sense that it'd be the direction he went to start a rebuild.

"The more I talk to Francis about the MMA side of things, when (Ferreira) fought, Francis wrote me, 'I think this guy is good,'" Nicksick told MMA Junkie Radio.

"I think that fight definitely intrigues him."

It's been one of those weeks, no?

Jake Paul beat a guy who resembled an out-of-work longshoreman and insisted afterward that he was driven to prove himself on boxing's highest level. Then, less than seven days later, he announced he'd be fighting a by-then 58-year-old Mike Tyson in July.

But as intriguing as that prospect might be to the legions of device-addled "Problem Child" sycophants, we'd like to go one better in the internet-busting department.

How about Ngannou, whom Joshua labeled "the next Tyson" while the two men chatted shortly after their fight on Friday, go ahead and take his own shot at the man who helped train him for the Fury fight last October?

Imagine the possibilities.

Two of the men who've carried the "Baddest Man on the Planet" mantle would make for an impossibly compelling dream match in the ring. And who'd know better how to exploit Ngannou's stylistic weaknesses than a man who helped prep him for his best ring night?

Does it lose a little luster given the horizontal nature of Ngannou's Friday exit? Sure.

But don't bother telling us you wouldn't watch. Because we don't believe you.